Tag: World Class plan

With few Scottish events to choose from, Kyle Gordon decided he should take things into his own hands and travel a bit to get a race – but maybe he took things a bit too far? Saint Petersburg, formerly ‘Leningrad,’ Russia on the Baltic Sea’s Gulf of Finland…

It’s not every day you get the chance to see some of the sport’s greatest names just up the road from your home, competing in the Tour of Britain 2022. Fortunately, by the time we got to Union Street it was just drizzling, not cold but grey and understandably not conducive to riders wanting to stand and chat...

I’ve checked the legendary Italian ‘CONI’ cyclists training manual but can find no mention of it. I’m talking about ‘Kestrel Super Lager’, 9% by volume, but that was the ‘recovery drink’ of choice of a certain Mick Bradshaw, one of the fastest time testers around in the 70’s and 80’s and 1988 RTTC 50 Mile Time Trial Champion.

Raleigh's Evan Oliphant recently made some cycling history when he became the first Scotsman to win the Star Trophy - or as it's known now, 'The Premier Calendar.' But 'Star Trophy' just sounds so much better. The season long contest was first run in 1959 when the legendary John Perks won it the names engraved upon the silver demand respect - Les West, Hugh Porter, Phil Griffiths, Malcolm Elliott, Paul Curran and Russell Downing to name a few.

Dublin's Shay Elliott was a man of firsts: the first (and only) English speaker to win Het Volk in 1959; the first English speaker to win a stage in the Vuelta and to wear the amarillo jersey of race leadership in 1962; the first English speaker to win a Giro stage in 1960, and the first English speaker to hold the yellow jersey of race leadership in the Le Tour in 1963, but his pro career ended ignominiously and his premature death at just 36 years of age is still the subject of speculation in Irish cycling circles....

In the ‘whatever happened to?’ file: Mr. Jim Linden, former four times Scottish BAR; six times Scottish individual time trial champion and three times Scottish record breaker. The good news is that we can report that he’s alive and well and living in Hong Kong where, at 84 years-of-age he’s still working as a consultant.