Tag: Plan de Corones

A man who's been working hard in defence of Garmin's pink jerseys - first on the shoulders of Lithuanian Ramunas Navardauskas and then Canada's Ryder Hesjedal - is Danish fast man, Alex Rasmussen. Alex took time to chat to his six day runner before the roll out at Assisi on Wednesday en route Montecatini Terme.

The CTT Classic TT around Loch Ken is unique; it’s a lovely course without too much traffic and if you catch sight of the red kites wheeling around overhead it adds to the feeling that it’s a special venue for a bike race. The fastest ride on Sunday was by Sandy Taylor of GTR-Return to Life p/b Streamline with 57:20 from team mate, Chris Smart with 57:23, with CTT Scotland Olympic Time Trial Champion Marc Anderson completing a ‘full house’ for GTR with 58:26.

During the entire history of the Peace Race from 1948 to 1989 there were few Western winners, and no English speaker ever won - except one that is, in 1952: Ian Steel of Scotland. The story that the East European propaganda machine circulated after that edition of the Peace Race, 60 years ago, was that the "Westerner" winner Steel had been approached by his country's intelligence agency before he travelled to the race and was asked to; 'keep his eyes open' whilst behind the Iron Curtain - to spy, in other words.

If there’s a rider more closely associated with a city than Iljo Keisse is with Gent then I can’t think of it. Born and bred in the capital of East Flanders, raised on the boards of the Blaarmeersen velodrome, the Gentenaars love him and he loves them. Iljo's dad, Ronie Keisse owns the legendary Café de Karper, a favourite student haunt in Gent, just a five minute walk from the Kuipke and the only place to be on a November Sunday evening when the Six Day finishes, so we sat down with Ronie on the Monday morning after the Six to discuss the life and times of his boy, one of the very last real ‘vedettes’ – star Six Day men.

Getting It Done. Yesterday was an interesting day for the team: we had Svein in the leader's jersey, and so were obliged to control the race.

Ciao, come sta? Viareggio on the west coast of Italy, 06:30 Saturday May 15 and VeloVeritas is on the Giro - well, not quite, we have our credentials to collect from the Gazzetta camper van, this morning at the stage start in Carrara. The trip down wasn't too bad, Edinburgh to Luton, then Luton to Pisa - there was an hour's delay at Luton, but we were on Easyjet, so no one gets too stressed.