It's with sadness that we learned that, at 75 years-of-age Ryszard Szurkowski, the man who you can argue was the greatest amateur rider in the history of the sport, has passed away.
This year Marcin Bialoblocki has turned his attention to the 100 mile TT distance, winning the national title before setting out specifically to break competition record in Norfolk, last Sunday, bringing the record close to the scarcely believable 3 hours 10 minutes barrier with a 3:13:37 ride; that’s 31 miles per hour average on a course with 42 roundabouts.
When Alex Dowsett (Movistar & GB) rode 17:20 to take the British ‘10’ record earlier this year we all thought, ‘wow!’ and that it would take some beating. Enter one Marcin Bialoblocki, Polish professional with the One Pro Cycling team – with a 16:35, hacking 45 seconds off the Dowsett mark. That’s head shakingly quick – but not content with that, the next day Bialoblocki put Dowsett’s ‘25’ record of 44:29 to the sword with 44:04. We just had to ‘have a word.’
VeloVeritas didn't make it down to The Drummond Trophy; Norrie would never forgive us if we didn't pay some sort of tribute to his famous race. So it was our pleasure to contact the 2015 winner, Polish Raleigh man, Karol Domagalski to hear his story - it's a good one.
Mick Bennett is well known these days as head of Sweetspot Management and Race Director of the Tour of Britain, but as an athlete in the '60s, '70s and '80s was a formidable track and road rider and was part of the Team Pursuit quartet which refused to take their rightful World Championship title. Here's his story.
'Mission accomplished' with Ryder: Dave rattled us through dire weather up to the Garmin Hotel, just over 100 miles away.
The Liquigas guys were on their turbos when we arrived - lean, cut looking men.
Before the start, I wasn't sure Basso could win, but his policy of loss limiting has taken him to third on GC @ 1:22 on Rodriguez and 52 seconds behind Hesjedal.
Upholstery tacks? Seriously? Clearly my “Ugly Fans” rant was two days too soon. The Tour is such a great spectacle partly because of the amazing numbers of fans lining the road.
I'm sitting in the press room at the World Road Championships 2007, sharing a table with my boyhood hero, Hugh Porter, four time world pursuit champion and on the podium in that event for seven years straight-he'll need to get interviewed, I can't let that opportunity go! We're here for the Worlds in Stuttgart, the Under-23 time trial was this morning and ladies time trial was this afternoon. I was lucky-enough to follow the Latvian rider, Gatis Smukulis in the test.
Kruijswijk's crash, would you have waited? Wee Esteban says: "I’m very sorry for the crash of Steven (Kruijswijk), unfortunately it’s a part of bike racing and he was unlucky today." Either way, it was a horrible crash - the Dutchman seemed paralysed with fear, it didn't look like he even tried to steer round that bend. Ed rounds up the last three stages roadside.
Rudy Pevenage was the man behind Jan Ulrich and guided him to a Tour de France win and many other successes, but let's not forget he was a top rider in his own Pro career. Not much has been heard of the man from Moerbeke recently, so we looked him up on one of our visits to Belgium for the Omloop...