Joe Truman is a highly successful track man with a raft of medals at National, Commonwealth and European levels across Sprint, Team Sprint, Kilometre and Keirin disciplines and he very kindly gave his memories of his days in the highly specialised and fascinating world of Japanese Keirin racing.
It was Keirin and Sprint legend Koichi Nakano’s birthday the other day, 65 years-old. His huge claim to fame is that he won 10 consecutive World Professional Sprint titles. Mention of his name got us thinking that he didn’t really win those titles straight and to find out more we spoke to Gordon Singleton of Canada…
The Lake APR (Australian Pursuit Race) is a classic early season event on the Scottish road race calendar and is promoted by Glasgow Nightingale Cycling Club. The event kicks off at 10.30am on the A811 just east of Buchlyvie and the course runs anti-clockwise twice round the Lake of Menteith finishing on the A875 after an uphill final stretch north through Balfron.
1st Chance For A Break. The Mountains have been entered and the big show has begun in earnest! Looking at this stage, one would predict it to be a day pencilled in by breakaway specialists such as Simon Gerrans, Thomas Voeckler or Thor Hushovd (had he have been racing) who have already let a good whack of time go from the race leader. In this way they’re non-threatening when they do get in a break and thus aren’t chased down.
Season 2016 saw John Archibald record times of 50:07, 50:04 and 50:03 for 25 mile time trials - so a big goal for him was to dip below the magic 50 minutes. On Sunday past on the rolling dual carriageway between Brechin and Forfar he didn’t just dip inside the 30 miles per hour standard, he left it way behind with a stunning 47 minutes and 57 seconds ride. In the process he took 46 seconds off Graeme Obree’s 1994 record of 48:43; we just had to, ‘have a word.’
Danilo Di Luca rewarded his hard-working teammates in the best way yesterday (Sunday) by racing a tactically perfect Liege-Bastogne-Liege and taking the win in front a first-class field. "I've been dreaming of winning this race for nine years. This is the most beautiful and most difficult race that I have won" exclaimed Di Luca post-race.
It was Public Image Ltd. who sang; ‘Two Sides To Every Story’ and whilst VeloVeritas and many of our regular readers feel that the Manx Missile committed ‘Cavicide’ by going for a gap which wasn’t there in the ‘Sagan Saga’ where the Slovak was alleged to have deliberately decked Cavendish and was consequently turfed off the race, not everyone shares our view.
Fietsenphotography's John Young has supplied us with lots of great images from the Six Day season this winter, and it's been great to focus on some racing, rather than all the other stories which mire the sport's image.
John's photos have illustrated our recent Diary pieces from Denmark, but we have lots left that we haven't used, we're sure you'll enjoy looking through them to get the flavour of the final Six of the season.