Dimension Data’s Steve Cummings has been a stage race winner in the Tour of the Mediterranean; a semi-classic winner in the Coppa Bernocchi and a stage winner in the Giro della Reggio Calabria, Tour of the Algarve, Vuelta, Tour de France, Tirreno-Adriatico, Tour of the Basque Country and Dauphine. Last weekend he added another beautiful Tour de France stage to his palmarès.
Steve Cummings? He’s the real deal; a world champion on the track in the team pursuit; he paid his dues with Landbouwkrediet and Barloworld; rode for the ‘mega’ teams, Discovery, Sky, BMC; was part of that famous team which carried Cav to a rainbow jersey in Copenhagen but now he’s found his true niche – with South African squad Dimension Data. Last year the team raced as MTN-Qhubeka with Cummings netting a brilliant stage win in le Tour; this year the squad, with new sponsors has taken Cav on board and moved up to the World Tour.
A man our friend Vik first pointed out to us last year and who we interviewed for ‘another well known website’ on account of him being North American, is a Thomas Rufus Gibbons – better known as Tom Gibbons.
Amidst the welter of Tweets, outraged forum posts, recriminations and blame culture which have followed in the wake of 'LanceGate' we decided that it may be educational to speak to a man who's ridden the whirlwind of a dope test positive, Joe Papp.
‘Sprinter stages,’ why are they so dull? Albeit ‘Bison’ Bodnar (Bora hansgrohe & Poland) did a job of enlivening the last wee bittie of yesterday’s procession. Maciej Bodnar ended the day on top. Firstly, the GC teams won’t go in the break, they’re there to look after their team leader; mountain stages are different where they’ll put men up the road so as the team leader can bridge up to them.
As we said the other week, it's always nice to get feedback from readers - even when we get slapped wrists. One of our Scandinavian readers wasn't happy that in our 'Six Day Hardware' piece we missed out the frames of a certain Baron Merckx. We hope the following rectifies things as we look at Merckx machines present and recent past.
A wee while ago we chatted with Brent Emery (interview to follow), who rode one of the US team’s Raleigh ‘Super Bikes’ to ’84 Olympic silver, so it was only fair we caught up the man who rode the wildest bike which appeared at those Games; Rory O’Reilly.
First up on Sunday at the Berlin Six Day was the team picture, like one of those shots of the ‘class of 1955’ or whenever that they take at expensive schools. The only photos the guys I went to primary school with had taken were on an individual basis with the each of them holding up a card bearing their name and number.