If you look at those sharp black and white cycling pictures from the 70’s and 80’s on social media, beside or behind the featured star rider there’s often an uncredited figure – as likely as not that’ll be the rider’s soigneur. And in the case of some of the biggest stars of the eras from Eddy Merckx to Bradley Wiggins that soigneur is liable to be the gentleman we’re about to present to you; Mr. Pierrot de Wit from Brussels.
If you watched the recent live stream of the Parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing (part of the inquiry into "Combatting Doping in Sport") you'll know the bulk of the session focused on the key question "what was in the jiffy bag?" which was transported from the UK by Simon Cope, handed to Dr. Richard Freeman at the end of the Critérium du Dauphiné, for use by Sir Bradley Wiggins. Committee member John Nicolson (Member of Parliament for East Dunbartonshire and the SNP spokesperson on Culture, Media and Sport) demonstrated an amazing ability to ask logical, 'boiled-down' questions which presented a narrow set of options as answers.
It was last year when our man Dave Chapman first spotted Aussie Luke Davison doing the biz in the Flanders kermises; but it was 2007 when he first came to Aussie national prominence as part of the winning squad in the National Team Sprint Championships. Rolling the momentum into 2014 he’s taken Australian, World - and now Commonwealth team pursuit titles. And that’s not to mention fitting in a win in the 200 K UCI 1.2 Omloop der Kempen in The Netherlands in his Synergy Baku colours.
Founded in late 1897, Ribble Cycles are celebrating their 125th anniversary with the launch of a 125 Campaign and unveiling three signature 125 Anniversary Edition designs.
It must be the water in Mol in the Province of Antwerp, Belgium; not only is it Tom Boonen’s home town, it’s also the home town of the man who was in the team car behind him for so many of the ‘Tornado’s’ triumphs; Wilfried Peeters, sport director with the Deceuninck ‘Wolf Pack’ was a ‘Man of the Northern Classics’ in his own right.
So my latest update on the Dan Patten Blog tells about the run of bad luck which continued through July and into August, including a collision with a car and less than a week later getting taken down by a bidon during the third stage of the Ronde van de Provincie Antwerpen.
Kiwi, Gordon McCauley has been a round ‘since grass’ and has raced just about everywhere there is to race and seen just about everything there is to see in pro bike racing. At 41 the man from the land of the long white cloud is still racing and winning – it was Vik who gave us the push to get hold of Gordon – we're glad he did. We recently took a wander through his career with him – here’s what he had to say
Ben Hetherington of Achieve attacked into the final drag maintaining a slender lead all the way to the line to take a strong victory with Jack Rees also of Achieve winning the bunch sprint.