Eileen Roe wins in Friesland

Eileen Roe (Team Ibis Cycles) won today's 31st Profronde van Surhuisterveen, making full use of her strong sprinting ability to cross the line ahead of Anouska Koster (2nd, Dolmans-Boels) and Trieneke Fokkens (3rd) after a race that saw difficult conditions caused by very heavy rainfall.

22-year-old Roe used a similar tactic to win the Colchester round of the Johnson HealthTech Women's GP in June, beating Vanderkitten's Ruth Winder and Twenty3c.co.uk-Orbea's Alice Barnes on that occasion. Her sprint seems, therefore, to be a powerful talent and is one that will be sure to bring her many more victories.

Chapeau Eileen - we'll be looking forward to seeing you race in the 2016 Olympics!

Armitstead on the issues facing women's cycling

Lizzie Armitstead

In an interview with Cycling News, Olympic silver medalist Lizzie Armitstead has hit out at "sexism and inequality" in cycling. That inequality exists is beyond doubt - it's common knowledge that many women even at the top level receive no salary at all while their male counterparts are paid a guaranteed minimum wage and the prizes awarded to race winners in women's cycling are, quite frankly, laughable compared to those in the majority of men's races. Many people will say that Armitstead is wrong in linking this to sexism and insist it's due to the harsh realities faced by the sport resulting from the simple fact that there is far less money in women's cycling. However, what the article doesn't make immediately clear is that she isn't saying that race organisers and UCI officials are overtly sexist (some of them may well be sexist, of course, but few of them would allow themselves to be seen as such) - she's saying that women's cycling's problems stem from a more deeply-rooted sexism, a belief in society that athletic competition between females can never be as exciting as athletic competition between men, and that the resulting smaller audience is why women's cycling doesn't get the attention it deserves. This  is a point of view that may not necessarily be correct; but it's a valid one shared by many and the UCI, as the body responsible for developing competitive cycling, has a duty to explore it.

Armitstead believes that one possible solution would be "forcing ProTour teams to have a women's team." That is certainly an option, and seems a good one at first - many people also support the idea of forcing race organisers to hold women's races alongside their men's events. But would it work? Would teams devote the time, money and media to their female riders as they do to their men?

When whether Team Sky should sponsor a women's team, Armitstead hits the nail on the head - "I think Team Sky is missing an opportunity," she says. That is the real answer: persuading, rather than forcing, teams that it is in their interest to have a women's team. That way, they'll give them the backing they deserve. Force them to run women's teams and they'll do so resentfully, fielding athletes who have been given the cheapest minimum of coaching, riding bikes that are only a fraction of the value and quality that the men on the team ride. Result: in the eyes of the public, who in many cases will not understand the underlying issues, female cyclists appear less talented and less competitive than the men. Sky have had plenty of opportunity to put together a women's team and have a budget more than high enough to run several; it seems clear, therefore, that they have no interest in doing so (note that they do sponsor female track cyclists - who enjoy a higher public profile than female road cyclists).

So, how can they be persuaded that women's teams will bring them more glory and, crucially, more sponsors? The riders themselves are already doing all they can - they ride to their limits, even if they've had to work a forty-hour week in order to be able to afford to be at the races in which they compete, and they raise the issues facing their sport whenever they can, just as Armitstead is doing. There are a few team officials and managers doing a superb job too - Stefan Wyman, owner of Britain's Matrix-Prendas, is a glowing example and has recently written a series of informative articles on the subject (the latest of which can be found here); so to is Karl Lima, manager of the Hitec Products-Mistral Home - both have fought for many years to get a fair deal for the athletes on their own teams and in women's cycling in general. Rabobank is another admirable case and provides excellent support for its highly successful women's team.

"The race with the Dutch girl and the English girl" -
Armitstead and Vos follow Olga Zabelinskaya

It seems, then, that it's up to fans. We can do a very great deal to save and improve the sport we love, especially right now - it's notable that people who have previously had no interest in cycling at all suddenly know the names Marianne Vos and Lizzie Armitstead because of the Women's Road Race at the Olympics (or at the very least are talking about "the race with the Dutch girl and the English girl" - hey, it's a start). We can help to make sure they keep talking about it - all we need to do is tell anyone who will listen why women's cycling is as great and as fascinating a sport as it is, write blogs about it, Tweet anything we find about it, share our knowledge and enthusiasm, go to races and encourage others to do so too. That way, we pass on the love to new fans and increase the audience, which in turn makes women's cycling far more tempting to potential sponsors - and it's their money that will persuade the teams and race organisers to make space for the women.

Daily Cycling Facts 31.07.12

Craig MacLean

Craig MacLean

Born in Grantown-on-Spey on this day in 1971, Craig MacLean had a very successful track career, having been selected for the Team GB Sprint team and becoming lead rider in 2004 he was a part of several successful victory attempts, also winning numerous Individual Sprints and Kilos. He announced his imminent retirement at the Manchester round of the World Cup in 2008, citing a back injury that had prevented him finding form throughout the season - at that event, he won a heat for the Keirin but was relegated by judges.

Two years after retiring - the minimum required by UCI rules - MacLean returned as able-bodied pilot for paralympic tandem competitions; at the 2011 World Championships he teamed up with retinitis pigmentosa sufferer Neil Fachie and piloted him to gold medals in the Tandem B 1,000m Time Trial and the Tandem B Sprint.

Rémy Di Gregorio
Rémy Di Gregorio, born in Marseilles on this day in 1985, won Stage 8 at the Tour de l'Avenir and came nineteenth overall at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2005 - impressive results for a rider who had joined his first professional team, La Française des Jeux, only the previous season. The following year he finished Dauphiné in seventeenth place and won the King of the Mountains, which encouraged the team to select him for the Tour de France; unfortunately he crashed and broke his elbow during Stage 4. He was widely touted at the time as France's next great climber, but would never manage to match his early promise.

Rémy Di Gregorio, Tour de Romandie,
2010

In 2008, Di Gregorio returned to the Tour after coming third in the King of the Mountains at the Tour de Romandie, this time he won the Combativity Award for Stage 10 and finished in 59th place. 2009 brought him only one podium place (third, Stage 2, Route du Sud), though he was top ten twice at the Vuelta a Espana; then he finished the 2010 Vuelta in 21st place the following year. In 2011 he joined Astana, won Stage 7 at Paris-Nice and finished the Tour de France in 39th place; raising hopes that he might win his first Grand Tour stage the next year - but, on the 10th of July 2012, during the Tour de France's first rest day, he was arrested by French police as part of an investigation into doping. He was immediately suspended by his new team Cofidis and will be sacked if allegations against him are proved.


Svetlana Pauliukaitė, born in Mosėdis, Lithuania on this day in 1985, won the National Time Trial Championship in 2005, then the National Points Race Championship the following year. At the time of writing, she rides for the Forno d'Asolo-Colavita team.

Australian rider Henk Vogels, born in Perth on this day in 1973, came tenth at Paris-Roubaix in 1997 and 1999 and second at Gent-Wevelgem in 2003.

Tatsiana Sharakova, born on this day in 1984, was Belarusian Road Race Champion in 2005, European Under-23 Pursuit Champion in 2005 and 2006 and National Road Race and Time Trial Champion in 2007, 2008 and 2009. In 2011 she won the Points Race at the World Track Championships; to date in 2012 she has won the National titles for Pursuit, Sprint, Scratch, Points and Omnium and shares the Team Pursuit title.

Belizean rider Orlando Chavarria, born on this day in 1971, enjoyed a successful career peaking with 27th place in the 100km Team Time Trial at the 1992 Olympics and his 1995 victory at Belize's most prestigious race, the Holy Sunday Classic. Then, one day, he went to a race and came back "a different person," according to his sister Therese. He couldn't sleep and, having been a quiet and gentle person previously, began to shout and act in a threatening manner - and refused to discuss it with his family. Eventually enough was enough and against his will, the family enlisted the help of a doctor, Claudina Cayetano, who recognised the symptoms of schizophrenia. With care, attention and anti-psychotic medication, Chavarria soon regained his health and the world once again made sense to him; he was able to return to his job as a mechanic. He also returned to training and still races today.

Amir Zargari

Amir Zargari, who was born in Khomein on this day in 1980, is one of Iran's most successful cyclists with numerous stage wins in Middle Eastern and Asian races. In 2011 he won the UCI 2.2 Tour of Singkarak in Indonesia, which proved sufficient to earn him a contract with the World Tour French AG2R-La Mondiale team.

Auguste Daumain, born in Selles-sur-Cher in this day in 1877, won a bronze medal for the 25km Race at the 1900 Olympics and, following the disqualification of numerous riders for cheating, was awarded sixth place overall at the 1904 Tour de France.

On this day in 2007 Patrik Sinkewitz was sacked from the T-Mobile team after a sample taken at that year's Tour de France turned out to contain suspiciously high levels of testosterone; he refused his right to have the B sample provided at the same time tested and later confessed to using a testosterone ointment, then to EPO and illegal blood transfusions. Two years later, again in the 31st of July, Iban Mayo's two-year ban for EPO - upheld by the CAS after the Spanish Federation cleared him due to a clean B sample - came to an end; on that very same day Mikel Astarloza, who ridden for Euskaltel-Euskadi since 2007 (Mayo rode for the team ontil 2006), started a two-year ban after he too tested positive for EPO. Astarloza has continually insisted that he is innocent and says that doping amounts to "sporting suicide" due to the efficiency of modern tests; the team could find no reason to disagree and took the very unusual step of publicly stating that it would keep a place open for him once his ban expired; he rejoined them in August 2011.

Other cyclists born on this day: Diego Caccia (Italy, 1981); Franky van Haesebroucke (Belgium, 1970); Vitaly Shchedov (USSR, now Ukraine, 1987); Hermann Smiel (Germany, 1880); Rodolfo Rodino (Uruguay, 1937); Nils Henriksson (Finland, 1928); Vittorio Cavalotti (Italy, 1893, died 1939); Euripides Ferreira (Brazil, 1966).

New backer for Holland Ladies' Tour

Organisers of the Holland Ladies' Tour - among the most prestigious European women's cycling events now that the Giro Donne is the sole surviving women's Grand Tour - have revealed that they're successfully recruited a new main sponsor.

Chairman Marten de Lange announced at the end of January this year that the race had been temporarily suspended due to financial difficulties. However, around four weeks later he was able to confirm that the race would go ahead after other sponsors agreed to provide more backing, but that it would have to be a more "economical" event. "It would be a shame if this race was to disappear, especially now that it offers such a perfect prelude towards the world championship in Limburg one a week later," he said. "We are still negotiating with a potential sponsor. If that happens, we can make the race as good as previous years - which is what the successful women of Dutch cycling deserve."

The new backer, Brainwash, is a chain of hairdressers that will already be familiar to many fans, having maintained links to women's cycling for some years - it previously sponsored its own Brainwash team before becoming co-sponsor of the Rabobank Women's team. However, company managers had let it be known when the team closed that they remained keen to continue their support and presence in the sport: that they have now extended it is a promising sign that they've found the returns satisfactory. In difficult economic times that have seen numerous races and teams vanish due to financial problems, this goes a long way to encouraging other firms to become involved.

The race, which has been won in the past by such illustrious names as Leontien van Moorsel, Petra Rossner, Kristin Armstrong and new Olympic champion Marianne Vos, is due to take part between the 4th and 9th of September and will now become known as the Brainwash Women's Tour.

Congrats Lizzie!

Lizzie's success in winning Team GB's first Olympic medal of 2012 - even if she was unable to beat the fantastically-talented Marianne Vos of the Netherlands - is the best advert that British women's cycling could ever have hoped to receive. Many people who watched the race will have had little or no interest in cycling prior to Bradley Wiggins' historic Tour de France victory and were probably unaware that there is a whole world of professional cycling existing just beyond the range of most media; Lizzie's triumph and appearances on the nightly news brings the sport to the public's attention and attracts new fans.

Chapeau to her and the entire women's team!

Left to right: Lizzie Armitstead, Marianne Vos and Olga Zabelinskaya

Daily Cycling Facts 30.07.12

Bert Oosterbosch

Born in Eindhoven on this day in 1957, Bert Oosterbosch showed enormous potential as an amateur and won seven major races in 1978, the year before he turned professional with Peter Post's legendary Ti-Raleigh, then in his first season with the team he won six victories and became World Pursuit Champion.

Oosterbosch did well on the track throughout his career with three National and one World Champion titles, but he would become known primarily as a road time trial specialist. Yet he could also perform well enough on mass-start stages to place well in General Classifications, as was the case in 1980 when he won the Tour de Luxembourg and Stage 8 at the Tour de France. He would also win Stages 6 (time trial) and 8 (222km mass-start) at the Tour in 1983, and in 1985 he won the Prologue at the Vuelta a Espana.

All in all, Oosterbosch achieved around 91 professional victories, mostly for Ti-Raleigh or Panasonic, the team Post set up after Raleigh withdrew from racing. He would almost certainly have won many more had he not have been plagued by bad health - he had meningitis twice, and his career was brought to a premature end in 1988 when he developed severe knee problems. In 1989 his knees had recovered sufficiently that he came out of retirement, winning his first post-return race on the 13th of August. Five days later, aged just 32, he died of a massive heart attack, leaving behind his wife and two young daughters.

As is invariably the case when any young athlete dies, suspicions soon arose that Oosterbosch's death was caused by doping, specifically EPO which has been linked to numerous similar cases - if so, he would be one of the first victims of the drug. Willy Voet, the Belgian soigneur who was arrested with a car full of drugs and thus sparked off the notorious Festina Affair of 1998, claims in his book Breaking the Chain that Oosterbosch used Synacthen (tetracosactide), a drug that stimulates the adrenal glands and thus raises cortisol blood levels, at the GP des Nations in 1982. However, his statement that the rider came 18th because "the drugs initially blocked his ability to work hard" when he in fact came third may be an indication that Voet's memory is unreliable (perhaps as a result of his taste for the odd injection of Belgian Mix - a concoction of cocaine, heroin, morphine, amphetamine, caffeine and, apparently, anything else that happened to be around) or that - as many people believe - he is a liar; and it is equally possible that Oosterbosch's death was caused by a pre-existing heart defect, undiagnosed by the methods available at that time.


Ben Greenwood, born in Nether Kellet, Lancashire on this day in 1984, was British Under-23 Road Race and Time Trial Champion in 2005.

Aldo Bini, born Montemurlo, Italy on this day in 1915, won the Giro di Lombardia in 1937 and 1942. He also won Stage 2 at the Giro d'Italia in 1936 (and came second at the World Championships), 13, 14 and 19b in 1937 and 5b in 1946. His career lasted from 1934 to 1955.

Julio Alberto Pérez, born in Tlaxcala on this day in 1977, won the Giro del Trentino in 2005 and remains the only Mexican to have ever won the race. In 2002, he won Stages 13 and 16 and the overall King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia.

Ángel Madrazo Ruiz, born in Santander, Cantabria on this day in 1988, had won just enough races to be signed up by Movistar in 2011. That year, fans at the Tour Down Under made him the subject of their very fine tradition of picking the humblest non-English speaking domestique in the race and treating him like the greatest cyclist that ever lived, turning up at hotels in vast numbers, painting his name in vast letters on the roads and cheering him at every opportunity. He paid them back in 2012 with a superb performance for fourteenth place overall and later came fifth at the Tour Méditerranéen and fourth at the GP Miguel Indurain.

Mike Fraysse, born in the USA on this day in 1943, was president of US Cycling from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1994 to 1998, having sat on the Federation's board of directors from 1969 to 1994. As a result, he was involved in the coaching and development of some of the finest riders his nation has ever produced, among them Greg Lemond, Connie Carpenter, Rebecca Twigg, Andy Hampsten and Lance Armstrong. He also holds life membership of the Polish Federation, which awarded him its Medal of Distinction in recognition of his work with and support for the legendary coach Eddie Borysewicz. Fraysse designed and built the bike ridden to second place by Greg Lemond at the 1979 Junior Worlds, believed to be the first frame to use aerodynamic teardrop-shaped tubing, and now owns and runs a private training facility.

Other cyclists born on this day: Janez Žirovnik (Yugoslavia, 1935); Jiang Guang-Nan (Taipei, 1948); Joseph McClean (Great Britain, 1935); Vicente Reynès (Spain, 1981); Conor Henry (Ireland, 1970); Arnaldo Carli (Italy, 1901); John Lundgren (Denmark, 1940); Gilles Maignan (France, 1968); Håkan Karlsson (Sweden, 1958); Karl Hansen (Norway, 1902, died 1965); Rainer Müller (West Germany, 1946); Giorgio Morbiato (Italy, 1948).

Daily Cycling Facts 29.07.12

Vic Sutton

Vic Sutton, riding for
Libera-Grammont in 1960

Charly Gaul and Federico Bahamontes are rightly regarded as the greatest climbers in the history of professional cycling, but  they faced competition from an entirely unexpected source at the 1959 Tour de France - a skinny little British 23-year-old named Victor Sutton; British riders being considered in those days to be among the lower ranks of cyclists, despite Brian Robinson's Stage 7 victory a year earlier, and certainly not great climbers (indeed, to this day Britain has produced only two world-class grimpeurs, the Scotsman Robert Millar and Emma Pooley from England).

Born in Thorne, Yorkshire on the 3rd of December in 1935, Sutton has been so entirely forgotten today that Cycling Archives doesn't list a palmares for him and he has no page on Wikipedia, but his natural talent in the mountains, where he could keep turning a low gear at high revolutions per minute just like Gaul did, enabled him to climb from 109th place at the end of the first week of the Tour to 37th by the finish; on the Puy de Dôme time trial he recorded a time that remained the fastest for an hour and might have finished in the top ten in Paris had he not have shared Bahamontes' terror of descending - once over the summit, he seized up and lost large chunks of the time he'd gained on the way up.

He returned to the Tour in 1960, another year older and wiser and believed by some to now be in a position to beat the Eagle and the Angel, but his season up to the race had been too hard and he suffered a minor heart attack in Stage 18, the Tour's last day in the Alps. His doctor ordered him to give up racing immediately, but Sutton chose to continue to the end of the season. He continued cycling for pleasure for the remainder of his life, which ended on this day in 1999. Alongside Robinson, he was one of the first riders to show the world that British cyclists could compete at the highest level of the sport, and he should be far better known than he is today.


Canadian mountain biker Roland Green, born in Victoria on this day in 1974, won the National Championships in 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2003. He was World Champion in 2001 and 2002, also winning the World Cup the first year and a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in the second.

Massimo Podenzana, born in La Spezia on this day in 1961, won the Italian Road Race Championship in 1993 and 1994. In 1988 he won Stage 4a at the Giro d'Italia, in 1994 he finished in seventh place overall. He won the Giro di Toscana in 1995, then Stage 15 at the 1996 Tour de France. He is a brother-in-law of Ivan Basso.

Kilian Moser, born in Interlaken on this day in 1988, became Swiss Pursuit Champion in 2012. He is not related to the Italian cyclist Francesco Moser.

Faustino Rupérez, born in Piquera de San Esteban on this day in 1956, won the Spanish Road Race Championship in 1979, then the General Classification at the Vuelta a Espana one year later

Tommy Prim

Tommy Prim, born in Svenljunga on this day in 1955, had an extraordinarily successful junior and amateur career during which he won five National Championships and dominated the Swedish racing scene. He turned professional with Bianchi in 1980 (and would remain with them for his entire career), and won Stage 15 and the Youth category as well as fourth place overall and third in the Points competition that same year: a stunning Grand Tour debut by a new rider. The following year, he came second overall and for Points, then came second overall again in 1982. In 1983, Prim won Paris-Brussels, becoming the first Scandinavian rider to win a Classic; had his career not have coincided with that of Bernard Hinault, he might have been the second (after Gösta Pettersson, who won the Giro in 1971) to win a Grand Tour, too. After retiring in 1986, he opened a bike shop and later worked in a variety of jobs including at a mail order company, a saw mill and a fish smokery; he made his return to cycling as a manager for Team Crescent, which aimed to ind and develop Swedish promises.

Born on this day in 1990, British road and track rider Erick Rowsell became National Junior Time Trial Champion in 2007 and National Junior Road Race Champion the following year. He is the younger brother of three-time World Track Championships gold medal-winner Joanna Rowsell.

Eddy Mazzoleni

Eddy Mazzoleni, born in Bergamo on this day in 1971, finished third at the Giro di Lombardia in 1999, fifteenth at the Giro d'Italia in 2002, tenth at the Giro in 2003, thirteenth at the Tour de France in 2005 and third at the Giro in 2007, behind Danilo di Luca and Andy Schleck. Later that year he was implicated in the Oil for Drugs scandal, during which he and several other riders were investigating over their connections to Dr. Carlo Santuccione, who was accused of running a doping ring. Mazzoleni and others were caught out by a surveillance operation; he left Astana voluntarily and was later given a two-year ban.

Other cyclists born on this day: Laëtitia Le Corguillé (France, 1986); Sergei Kopylov (USSR, 1960); Kilian Moser (Switzerland, 1988); Atle Pedersen (Norway, 1964); Gabriel Niell (Argentina, 1941); Gwon Jung-Hyeon (South Korea, 1942); Janis Pratnieks (Russia, 1887); Sergey Kopylov (USSR, 1960); Chris Coletta (USA, 1972).