Tag: Via Roma

It's Giro time again! Getting to Venaria Reale wasn't too bad - Edinburgh to Malpensa Airport in Milan on Easyjet; pick up the hire car and head west towards Torino. We decided that rather than brave Friday night rush hour traffic, we'd stay in Chivasso, around 20 K from Torino. A wise decision, Torino was overflowing with 'Alpini' - Italian mountain troops, past and present - for their annual 'beano.' The day after the TTT the Gazzetta reckoned that there were one million people on the streets of the city - we believe it.

If you’re a VeloVeritas regular then you’ll have seen our interview with Flavio Zappi, the man who transforms promising U23 riders into World Tour performers. Will Scot, Callum Johnston be pulling on a QuickStep jersey in a year or three?

Folks say to me that Viktor, "VeloVeritas's answer to Nostradamus" doesn’t exist, he’s just a vehicle for me to express extreme view points. They’re wrong. The man actually lives and breathes – and mostly for all things cycling and the Coronavirus crisis has seen him at his ranting best.

We were chatting about the Scottish Hour Record the other day and it got us to thinking about Roddy Riddle’s 1995 ride of 46.570 which broke Graeme Obree’s 1990 ride of 46.390 - and lasted one year until Jim Gladwell established the current best of 46.650 in 1996. ‘What’s Roddy up to now?’ we mused - the last we heard he was running across the Sahara in the Marathon des Sables. Transpires he’s participating in the 6633 Ultra. The what? Best ask him...

Here at VeloVeritas we think that Scotland's great performances at the Commonwealth Games Velodrome didn't get the attention they merited. In order to set things right we decided to catch up with as many of our medallists as we could and learn a bit more about them and their medal-winning rides. James McCallum came back with a bronze medal from the 20 Kilometer Scratch, making a mockery of those who felt he wasn't worthy of selection.

Today the 204.7km eighth stage from Azlira to Alto de Aitana tackles seven rated climbs before the finish-line summit at the Aitana climb, rated 'especial' in the Vuelta as a stage ending atop a climb.