When Belgium's biggest fan of Aussie bike racing, Mr. Dirk Van Hove asked us to publish his interview with Australian ladies' champion Amanda Spratt there was no way we could refuse. He's chaperoned us around Het Nieuwsblad given us some of our best Aussie contacts and most importantly, introduced us to 'Orvelo' beer - and a fine brew it is.
It's the 'Belgian Opening Weekend'; Het Volk used to be a cult race, the teams would line up in the street just up from the Kuipke velodrome. The first team to set up would be the late Frans Assez’s Flanders squad — no flash bus or trucks, just a ‘Luton’ style van...
We're at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2012... we left the Vivaldi at 02:15 on Thursday morning - we must be getting old. Gent is changing, they've pulled down most of the station and there are cranes everywhere as the old girl's face gets lifted.
Le Tour, The Commonwealth Games, The Tam Gordon interview – there’s just been so much going on at VeloVeritas recently that we must have missed something? Ah yes, of course, Edinburgh Road Club’s Matthias Barnet winning the British Under 16 Criterium Championship on the technical Hog Hill circuit at Redbridge, London in July, for one thing.
As the first Briton to win 3 Olympic golds at the same Games since 1908, Scotland's Chris Hoy has become a beacon for British sporting achievement. This autobiography charts his life from 7-year-old BMX fanatic, supported by a devoted dad and local cycling club, through paralysing self-doubt and a major career overhaul, to the sport's holy grail.
Young Englishman Paul Double is a wee bit of a ‘forgotten man’ - out there in an Italian continental team racing against some of the world’s best - but not by VeloVeritas. Paul’s results this year are all the more commendable given he was hit by a car early in the year and had to fight back to fitness.
It's no surprise that Endura Racing's 'man of the year' Jonathan Tiernan-Locke has today signed for Team Sky. Anyone who thought that Englishman’s top six GC placing and King of the Mountains win back in the 2011 Tour of Britain was a freak result had their eyes opened this spring when the 27 year-old from Plymouth won the first stage, fourth stage and GC in this season’s Tour of the Mediterranean – a race dating back to 1974 and which boasts Eddy Merckx as one of its winners.
VeloVeritas resident prophet and Guru, Viktor is in Spain just now. His old bones can't handle the Scottish weather these days - a nice wee apartment in Benidorm. There's a Belgian and a Dutch bar, both within crawling distance and both with big TV's permatuned to sport, often bike racing. He has his bike out there and is about as happy as Vik ever gets. I rang him the other day to ask if he'd seen Etixx-QuickStep's beautiful ride to win the Worlds TTT...
Gilbert Gilbert. That's Gilbert repeating. Geddit?? haha! Dad Joke if ever I saw one! Today, stage 4, is another one for the punchy power climbers, with Phillipe Gilbert being the red-hot favourite. The finale is a 2km 6.6% kicker which is still probably not hard enough to let skinny blokes like Contador and Schleck do their thing, and will be more up Evans or Gilbert's alley.