Tag: Criteriums

British rider Sam Watson finished in seventh spot behind Michele Gazzoli of the Colpack Ballan squad in the GP della Liberazione - few top u23 races in Italy don’t have a Colpack man on the podium. Sam would be a good lad to catch up with, we thought to ourselves…

Mark Cavendish? There’s little left to say about the man, his third win of the 2016 Tour de France and his 29th career stage win to take him one ahead of Bernard Hinault in the record books with just the legend that is Eddy Merckx ahead of him on 34 stage wins. Dimension Data and Deloitte will be ecstatic. Cav beat Etixx Stage Four winner, Marcel Kittel into second place – the downhill charge should have suited the German - and in third spot a terrific result for Fortuneo’s Dan McLay not so far away from ‘The Missile.’ Kristoff, Coquard, Theuns, Sagan, Groenewegen all behind the Englishman – a real quality effort.

Britain’s last representative in Motor-Paced racing, a highly specialised branch of the sport – which is still very popular in Germany and Switzerland in particular – was Paul Gerrard. Gerrard is still active in the sport, chaperoning young GB riders to the six days which have junior and U23 competitions.

It occurred to me that VeloVeritas had never spoken to the man who won the last edition of the famous Tour of Britain Milk Race back in 1993; Chris Lillywhite. A quick message to our friend Martyn Frank, who was on management with Chris on the late, lamented Wiggins team and we were in touch.

Michael Storer's Tour preparation suffered a bit of a ‘blip’ in recent weeks when a fever prevented him from starting Stage One of the Tour of Romandie but he hopes to back for the final Tour preparation race, The Criterium du Dauphine. 

It’s always nice when readers write in and get involved with our mutual passion; especially if it’s something new to us at VeloVeritas. Graham Robson enjoys our pieces about riders from the past and emailed us to ask us if we had any plans to track down Englishman Bob Griese, who’d ridden for Mercier in the 60’s. To my shame, I hadn’t heard of the man but started my investigations – I was told by one of my contacts that sadly, Mr. Griese was dead. End of story – but not quite.