Tag: Mallorca

I felt like one of those football reporters at the racing here in Trinidad & Tobago at the Arima Velodrome, who has the copy all neatly spell checked; then the 2-1 down losing side bangs in two in the last 90 seconds. Roberto Chiappa was going to win the sprint final 2-0 against Home Boy, Sellier.

For the first time in many a year VeloVeritas didn’t make it down to Grenoble for the Four Days on the battle scarred boards of the winter track where Post, Merckx, Sercu, Clark, Moser and Thevent have all lifted the laurels. How I miss Bar Clemenceau, Pizza Natalie and the wee bakers where the baker always give me extra croissants ‘for luck.’ ‘New Wave’ French strong men and World Madison Champions Morgan Kneisky and Vivien Brisse took the honours from tough Spaniards Muntaner & Torres with Iljo Keisse limbering up for Gent in third spot with countryman De Buyst.

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.

Henk Vogels is an Australian with a very Dutch heritage and a long and varied career. We managed to track down the super-experienced rider on the Gold Coast to hear about his past and present. It’s perhaps appropriate that his first big wins came in the Flatlands, where his father was born, and his last victory should come in the New World where he spent half of a career which criss-crossed the North Atlantic.

Germany, somewhere near the Taunus mountains at 09:22 Sunday. We left the Zürich Six Day at 03:00 and there are still 400 kilometres to go to the ferry at Amsterdam. It began to snow like Hell about an hour into Germany; there were roadworks, we were diverted off the motorway and there were either no diversion signs or they were snowbound. Whichever it was, we ended up hideously lost and dropped a chunk of time.

If we asked 'who is the current World Sprint Champion?' back in 1970 few would have had any hesitancy in saying that the amateur champion was legendary Frenchman Daniel Morelon and the Professional Sprint king was Aussie, Gordon Johnson, mounted on a British-made Carlton.