"Ride a bike, ride a bike, ride a bike," the words of 'il Campionissimo'-'champion of champions,' Fausto Coppi when asked to give advise about training. The same advice holds still holds good for the 21st century, but it's a tad more sophisticated in these cyber days.
Maciej Bodnar deserved his win today; it was Vince Lombardi the legendary American Football coach and sports philosopher who said; “show me a ‘good loser’ and I’ll show you a loser.”
It's been a long time coming, but the Vikings from the north are finally starting their comeback tour of the World! Team Cyclesport.se is the brain child of Dennis Nystrand who has worked tirelessly for five years to bring Sweden its first professional team of the modern era, and to do so he's enlisted the help of UK based sports management company Sprocket Promotions to bring in some sponsors, which lead ultimately to a new partnership with Sprocket owner Martin McCrossan.
With the World Track Championships only a few weeks away, we thought we'd talk to some top riders who you may know not much about, guys with interesting stories to tell, our "left-field' stars. Here's Ryan Oelkers tale...
Back in December in our year end rant we mentioned the fact that there seemed to be one law for ‘genial Aussies’ and another for ‘dodgy Spaniards.’ What we said was: "And whilst Contador’s ‘contaminated beef’ defence was largely scorned, the mood surrounding Michael Rogers’ positive for Clenbuterol seems to be; ‘poor old Mick’ – with Matt White telling us that the UCI should sort out the Chinese meat industry."
A winter which has seen us recently lose two Italian ‘Greats’ in Ercole Baldini and Vittorio Adorni has taken another two champions from us; former World and Olympic Sprint Champion, Anton Tkac and former World Amateur Points Champion, Noel Dejonckheere.
Guten dag! We honoured Carlos yesterday, so we best pay tribute to Big Marcus today. It's been a great Tour for Columbia - and it's not over yet. We had to be flexible today, the plot was to do a bike feature - the top GC riders plus points and mountains leaders - but the start at Bourg-D'Oisans was so tight for space, with team buses in the village streets that there was no room for the team trucks. These went directly to the hotels at the finish in St. Etienne, so it wasn't the best day to bike skek.