Viktor calls; "That home page on the site hasn't changed for days. There's a Scottish pro called Alex Coutts out training in Spain, trying to get ready for the season, why aren't you talking to him?" Just one of the things that bugs about Vik, is that he's actually right a lot of the time!
Scottish rider, Alex Coutts, who is a regular interviewee on VeloVeritas, has been riding in Asia this season for the Giant Asia Race Team; it's now been five months since his season started in the Tour of Langkawi. As "The Burntisland Buzzard" is training again in Spain for a hard six week period of racing in China, Japan and Korea, we thought it was about time we got an up-date on life competing in the UCI Asia Tour circuit.
In the language of the Gael, Glasgow is, ‘The Dear Green Place,’ on Sunday for the European Road race Championship 2018 it was certainly ‘green’ – we’re not do sure about ‘dear’ though; it was grey, miserable, and wet – just plain DREICH. But we still love the city – last time we went west for the Commonwealth Games Road Race, this time we decided to get soaked in the East End.
Time again for a Dan Patten Blogupdate as this 2012 season in Belgium continues. Yet again the consistency has continued but also now I can happily say that consistency has been rewarded with some wins.
VeloVeritas waited until we were sure that James McCallum was displaying no symptoms of dengue fever before we caught up with him at Starbucks for a chat about his third Commonwealth Games.
Although the start sheet for the Tour de Trossachs is still to be finalised, it's looking to be a very interesting race - the field has been extended to accommodate 140 because the race is proving to be popular with riders of all abilities, and sees National Champions and World Champions taking part, as well as newcomers interested in trying out this classic course.
Arthur Doyle (Dooleys RT) will defend his title for the third time, but the big question is will he manage to beat both the hill climb and course record set by Jason McIntyre in 2007...
'I cycled from my house in the West End of Glasgow to Larkhall, that would be around 30 miles, rode a 140 mile road race - it went away down over Beattock - won it, then cycled home - so that was around 200 miles for the day.'
Things were different in Jimmy Rae's day.
VeloVeritas took a run up to Crieff Hydro to interview one of the very few Scots to have won national tours - Mr. James Rae.
Ours neat list of questions went out of the window and we decided it would be best to let Jimmy off the leash, year by year, popping in questions where we could...