Back in 2017 we had the pleasure of interviewing former six time British Motor Paced Champion, Roy Cox who despite his results not actually showing it was one of the best in the world behind the big motors. It escaped our notice that we had lost Roy, he passed away in 2019 but our friend and contributor, John Purser decided that Roy’s passing should not go unnoticed and helped us with a tribute to his friend and club mate.
In Part Two of the Tim Mountford story we heard how he received his first professional contract on the famous Kuipke boards in Gent, to landing a contract with Peter Post and his TI Raleigh squad, eventually retiring and setting up a bike shop business. Here we roll back a couple of years to find out more about his experiences behind the 'big motors'...
We've been looking back on the life of the late Ron Webb – one of the most important men in the development of professional track racing and the construction of velodromes all over the World. But Webb was also a rider and cut his teeth behind the big motors. Pip Taylor passed us these words by Ron on some of his time as a Stayer.
National Champion of two different nations at the same time? Is that possible? If your name is David Solari then the answer is ‘yes’ – and the man made six Worlds podiums in four different disciplines to boot.
Perhaps you’ve seen them on TV when Eurosport used to cover the Berlin Six Days – or maybe you remember them at Leicester, ‘back in the day?’ The ‘Big Motors.’ Germany, along with The Netherlands were always the ‘Heartland’ for the motor-paced aspects of the sport but in Britain back in the early 70’s we had one of the best in the world in Roy Cox. Cox was six times British Champion, won big on the German ‘stayer’ circuit, rode four World Championships and made the Worlds final in his home Worlds in 1970 – the first British amateur to do so in 70 years.
Britain’s last representative in Motor-Paced racing, a highly specialised branch of the sport – which is still very popular in Germany and Switzerland in particular – was Paul Gerrard. Gerrard is still active in the sport, chaperoning young GB riders to the six days which have junior and U23 competitions.
Harry Tanfield is good at Snakes and Ladders; he went up the ladder from UK continental team Canyon Eisberg to World Tour team, Katusha Alpecin, but that folded. However, he grabbed another ladder to go to French équipe AG2R, there was no contract renewal at the end of season 2020 though, then came the snake as he slid back down to another UK continental team, Ribble-Weldtite, just for a week or two. Now, he’s gone and grabbed a rung again, this time with South African squad Qhubeka-Assos.
Yes, we know, it’s still Classics Season – albeit VeloVeritas’s resident soothsayer Viktor maintains the season finishes with Paris-Roubaix and everything thereafter is a ‘Glamour Race’ – but Rio will be upon us before we know it and we felt we had to record the retirement of a man who we’d expected to be a mainstay of the New Zealand team pursuit squad in Brazil but who has decided to bow out before the Olympics; Marc Ryan.
A New Rockstar... Peter Sagan has now won three stages of the Tour this year: two uphill sprints, and a straight-up bunch kick. I’ve already mentioned it, but he’s still got more than ten Tours de France in his future (all things being well). How good is this kid going to be?
Sasha Castling, Ribble’s Head of Public Relations put us in touch with Jamie Burrow, Ribble’s Head of Product to talk gravel, cool but affordable machines, and their new SRAM eTap AXS x Ribble Gravel Ti machine in particular.
‘You need to talk that Flavio Zappi boy, his lads are racing all over Europe and getting good results!’ As often happens with VeloVeritas it’s our spiritual guide and fiercest critic, Viktor who gives us inspiration on who we should be speaking to. But there’s also the aspect that QuickStep new recruit James Knox, who we interviewed earlier in the year was a ‘Zappi Man’ so yes, times we had a word with Sen. Zappi.
There was never any doubt about Scotsman John Archibald’s talent; but we must lay aside UK results in the context of international racing, they simply don’t count with European team management. At 30 years-of-age our feeling at VeloVeritas was that John’s chances of a contract at the highest level were slim, despite his obvious class, however we’re glad to be proved wrong and John will be racing with Alberto Contador's EOLA-Kometa ProTeam squad next season.