Tag: Grand Tour

Irish professional, 23 year-old Rory Townsend (Canyon dhb p/b Bloor Homes) took third in the UCI 1.1 French Cup, Classic Loire-Atlantique behind French riders, winner Rudy Barbier (Israel Cycling Academy) and man-on-form, multiple recent podium finisher, Marc Sarreau (Groupama-FDJ). We caught up with Rory to hear his tale, before he won the East Cleveland Klondike GP and - just today - finished third in the Rutland – Melton International CiCLE Classic...

The weather was glorious on Sunday morning in Oviedo. After liberating the car from the car park - at huge expense - we were off, and stumbled right onto race route. The direction arrows made life very easy as we followed the whole 100 mile parcours. Race route ran through El Padrun, a tiny hill top village, in fact it was the first classified climb of the day. Four years ago, Davie and I stumbled upon El Padrun whilst searching for the Angliru.

Glasgow in the 70’s wasn’t the stylish, cultured city it is now; the London Government still hadn’t forgotten or forgiven 1919 with troops on the streets as ‘The Dear Green Place’ teetered on the brink of a ‘Red Revolution.’ The rider in our tale was a member of several Glasgow cycling clubs which meant an escape from the 'rough edges' of the city.

It's been a while since we spoke to our friendly Scottish Pro Evan Oliphant, so we figured this was a good time to get a progress report for the season so far, how life is treating him in Belgium and the setup in the new DFL team.

In winning the Tour of Thailand, Alex Coutts joined an elite club - British riders who have won an overseas national tour. A couple from the memory banks are: in 1965 Vin Denson won the Tour of Luxembourg and in 1988 the hugely under-rated Cayn Theakston won an epic 19 stage Tour of Portugal - but there aren't many more. We caught up with Alex, just after the Scottish hill climb championship.

Grand Prix de Saint-Dié-des-Vosges My latest antics in the gym meant that my quads have got too big for my (non-cycling) shorts, which resulted...