The Italians love a good 'Giovani' - Under 23 rider. Today's Edinburgh edition of the Gazzetta deals with Battaglin's fine Stage Four win. The Italian journo's are already thinking about when he's going to buy a Lambo/date a model/move to Monaco and they can say; 'he's not serious!'

One of the nice things about this gig is that people sometimes send you cool cycling books to review, in this case, ‘No Ordinary Joe’ sub-titled ‘Cycling Legends 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, a unique collection of stories, USA & Canada.’

Multiple Danish Champion on the track, European Champion and now three time World Champion; Michael Mørkøv has always been happy to give of his time to us and we had to catch up with him after his latest triumph in the Madison.

Robbie Mcewen, Oscar Freire, Linus Gedermann, Rui Costa, and Andre Greipel took the five one-day races that make up the Challenge Ciclista a Mallorca, which suffered from the weather like other events around the Med. Great to see Jens Voigt back in action and winning a competition too.

At French WorldTour squad Groupama FDJ, Lewis Askey has come close to a French UCI 1.1 semi-classic win and is always in the thick of the televised action. Unfortunately, his progress has been pulled up short by a crash at Paris-Roubaix – most likely caused by the dreaded disc rotor. We caught up with him as he recuperated back in England.

Earlier this year we mentioned the death of former Scottish Champion, Irvine Morrison; sadly, we didn’t have the knowledge to pen a proper tribute. Our old amigo, John ‘Ginger’ Gray forwarded this piece to us and confirmed that we have author Dennis White’s permission to run this tribute to Irvine which he wrote in 2018 – we think it’s well worth an airing on our pages.

Thor is staring down the barrel of a very tough day in the saddle today! He has been fantastic in first gaining the yellow jersey on the back of a great stage one sprint followed by his huge TTT effort, and then holding it with his epic rides up the Mur de Bretagne and Super-Besse. Can He Hold ?

Cannondale Synapse was the frame of choice for many of the riders of Team Liquigas at last weekend's Tour of Flanders, including Filippo Pozzato and eventual podium-finisher, Luca Paolini. The frame offers a number of features which make it well suited for the cobbled classics, the most physically demanding races of the calendar, both for the riders and their equipment.

A wall of sound greeted Alexander Kamp as he sprinted to a nail-biting victory on the third stage of the Tour de Yorkshire. Scarborough’s North Bay provided a dramatic finish location for the fifth year in succession, and as the waves crashed onto the coastline, a crescendo of noise also erupted as a vastly reduced peloton raced onto the closing straight.

Greg van Avermaet dedicated his stunning Tour de Yorkshire success to the memory of BMC Racing Team owner Andy Rihs after a superb final stage saw him crowned champion in Leeds. Rihs passed away at the age of 75 last month, with BMC still in mourning after losing a friend and passionate cycling fan as well as owner.

Scotland had an exceptional World Championship in Apeldoorn with Mark Stewart and Jack Carlin both on the podium; Stewart in the points race and Carlin in the individual and team sprint – both boding very well for the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in ‘24 days 09 hours and 55 seconds’ at time of writing. And there was that that remarkable young lady, Katie Archibald taking team pursuit silver with the GB squad and Madison gold with Emily Nelson.

The last time we spoke to Dan Bigham (Brother NRG Wattshop) there was just a chance that he’d have to line up for the hill climb championship to net a record breaking EIGHTH British title of the year - to go with the kilometre, pursuit, team pursuit, team time trial, CTT 25 mile title, CTT 50 mile title and CTT circuit time trial title. But on the tough Cockermouth 10 mile time trial course, the day was saved when the CTT ‘10’ championship went his way too – so that’s title number eight!

Billy Bilsland – ‘legend.’ An over-used word but entirely appropriate when speaking of this man; here’s one from our vaults we thought you might like to read.

No Steve Cummings – saving it for the road race or just no form? - it looked like a shoot-out then between Dauphine winner, Geraint Thomas and chrono specialist Alex Dowsett (Katusha) for the British Time Trial Championships 2018. The sun was out, our spot on the hill was perfect, the marshal was sound with not a trace of Janitordom and Dave’s cheese and ham pieces were of exceptional quality. And Britain’s best bike riders were set to scoot past us. Not much more a man can want in life.

National Champion of two different nations at the same time? Is that possible? If your name is David Solari then the answer is ‘yes’ – and the man made six Worlds podiums in four different disciplines to boot.