When I was a kid watching the Tour de France in the late Eighties, my rider allegiances often switched with whichever was my favourite jersey design. I would find myself supporting Renault one year, PDM the next, Z-Peugeot the year after that. As with football a few years earlier (and in the very same way as my young children today) I was something of a ... Read More
33 Results for tag Tour de France
Feliz Cumpleaños – Miguel Indurain
Happy Birthday Big Mig. - 16.07.1964 TdF Winner – 1991, ’92, ’93, ’94, ’95 Giro d’Italia Winner – 1992, ’93 World Time Trial Champion – 1995 Hour Record Holder – 1994 Olympic Gold Medallist – Time Trial – 1996 A monster of a man compared to most Grand Tour winners, Miguel ‘Big Mig’ Indurain won five Tours on the bounce, hardly pausing for a breather whilst also collecting 2 Giro d’Italia’s, an Hour Record and an Olympic gold medal ... Read More
Yellow Fever – Tour de France Preview
With so much focus in this country on the Grand Départ it has been hard at times to remember that there will be a further 18 days of racing after the world’s biggest cycling cavalcade leaves our shores. I have been as guilty of this as anyone by focussing my thoughts almost entirely on the opening two stages in Yorkshire and the Stage 3 ... Read More
Stoller’s Départ – Douglas Cowie & Matthew Shaw
I am lucky to be old enough, and to have arrived in London just in time, to have enjoyed the considerable pleasures of the old Reading Room at the British Museum. The circular space at the centre of the Great Court, which attained almost sacred status to the Capital’s writers of yesteryear, was just about the most evocative place one could imagine to read ... Read More
Happy Birthday – Greg Lemond
Happy Birthday Greg – 26.06.1962 TdF Winner – 1986, ’89, ’90 World Champion 1983, ’89 One of the most popular Tour winners of all time, Greg Lemond’s epic battles with his team mate Bernard Hinault and then with the life-threatening injuries he suffered in a freak shooting incident to come back for his second and third Tour wins are truly the stuff of legend. Boyishly enthusiastic, good-looking and yet determined to bring ... Read More
Portrait of ‘The Cycling Podcast’ – with Richard Moore, Lionel Birnie & Daniel Friebe
It’s just after 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon in Hackney and Richard Moore, Lionel Birnie and Daniel Friebe are looking for a bit of peace and quiet. The trouble is that around the busy East London streets of Broadway Market and London Fields school kids are heaving out onto the hot pavements and the nearby building sites that are sprouting up yet more flats ... Read More
Climbs and Punishment – Book Review – Felix Lowe
For some reason books about epic cycle rides often struggle to maintain sight of the reason behind the particular journey. Caught up with geography, mileage and the inevitable misfortunes that happen along the way, we are quickly left to forget what the point of the epic ride was in the first place. Context is quickly abandoned in place of stories about encounters with mountains, deserts ... Read More
Happy Birthday – Eddy Merckx
Happy Birthday ‘Cannibal’ TdF Winner – 1969, ’70, ‘ 71, ’72, ’74 Giro d’Italia Winner – 1968, ’70, ‘ 72, ’73, ’74 Vuelta a Espana Winner – 1973 World Champion – 1967, ’71, ’74 Paris-Roubaix Winner – 1968, ’70, ’73 Milan-San Remo Winner – 1966, ’67, ’69, ’71, ’72, ’75, ’76 Winner at Tour of Flanders, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Flèche Wallone, Giro di Lombardia World Hour Record 1972 A uncompromising winning machine, Eddy Merckx bestrides professional cycling as an unassailable colossus. His palmares is without compare, his dedication to victory without parallel. Quite simply The Greatest of All ... Read More
Yorkshire’s Grand Depart – Interview with Head of Media – Andy Denton
With the Tour de France less than a month away, all cycling eyes are turning to Yorkshire as final preparations are made before some of England’s most green and pleasant land is turned yellow for the couple of crazy days that will be Le Grand Depart. Leading the team charged with communicating the story of Yorkshire’s time in the spotlight is Head of ... Read More
The Complete Book of the Tour De France – Feargal McKay – Book Review
COMPETITION TO WIN A COPY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE.. As a self-confessed trivia and fact addict, one of my very favourite books as a teenager was Pears’ Cyclopedia. Not a particularly challenging text for an adolescent I will admit but, in pre-internet days, it was the single best source of a wide range of knowledge that I could lay my hands on. Being ... Read More
Happy Birthday – Chris Froome
Happy Birthday Chris Froome TdF Winner – 2013 The shortest palmares so far in the birthday series but I don’t think we will be saying that in a few years time. Froome’s rise from the obscurity of racing in Kenya is a worthy backstory to what could be the biggest marquee in the pro ranks over the next decade. A relentlessly driven, relentlessly polite man, ... Read More
Pantani:The Accidental Death of a Cyclist – Film Review
The new Marco Pantani film had its premiere in London’s West-End this week. I went along to see the film and also spoke with director James Erskine about it. – Often alone on the mountain climbs upon which he made his name. Ultimately alone in the Rimini hotel room where he died ten years ago, aged just 34. Always, it seems, alone in ... Read More
Happy Birthday – Bradley Wiggins
Happy Birthday Wiggo TdF Winner – 2012 Quadruple Olympic Gold Medallist Six time track World Champion Wiggins’ transition from Olympic track star to TdF winner, and his perceived gentlemanly attitude to racing, won him many French fans in 2012. Back in the UK he was loved for his unconventional podium speeches, his Mod style and for finally winning the Tour for Britain at the 99th edition. A supreme ... Read More
Bonne Anniversaire – Louison Bobet
Happy Birthday Zonzon World Champion – 1954 Tour de France Winner - 1953, ’54, ’55 Paris-Roubaix – 1956 Milan-San Remo – 1951 Ronde van Vlaanderen- 1955 Giro de Lombardia – 1951 France’s first post-war cycling hero, the elder and more successful of the two Bobet brothers was also the first rider to win the Tour de France three times in succession. His memory will be eternally wedded to the ‘Casse Desert’ section of the Col d’ ... Read More
Bonne Anniversaire – Henri Desgrange
Henri Desgrange – 31.01.1865 – 16.08.1940 Hour Record – 1893 Editor L’Auto newspaper - 1900 – 1940 Creator of Le Tour de France – 1903 Desgrange is rightly seen as the father of the Tour. Latching onto an idea of one of his correspondents – Geo. Lefevre – to help boost circulation, he set his newspaper firmly behind the creation of what quickly became Le Grand Boucle. Famously harsh on the riders of the ... Read More
Bonne Anniversaire – Jacques Anquetil
Jacques Anquetil – 08.01.1934 – 18.11.1987 TdF Winner - 1957, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’64 Giro D’Italia Winner – 1960, ’62 Vuelta A Espana – 1963 L-B-L – 1966; Ghent-Wevelgem – 1964 The Hour Record – 1956 The first 5-time winner of the Tour de France, and first winner of all three Grand Tours, Monsieur Chrono was famous (and often maligned) for his reliance on his time-trialling ability to win. He was widely decried as being boring in his professional career. The opposite could be ... Read More
Three is a Magic Number – The Trials of a Balanced Outlook on Life
“Somewhere in the ancient mystic Trinity, you get Three as a magic number” – Bob Dorough, Schoolhouse Rock! Trouble, they say, comes in threes. The way the back half of last year went personally I would have to add in a factor of at least 10 to that figure, but the notion of a Triad of Adversity seems to be a well held adage. Once a couple ... Read More
Dear Santa: Bike Books
Christmas is coming. Obviously we are all hoping for a big dump of snow around the 23rd to get us into the festive spirit, and then a week of glorious winter sun between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, so that we can get out on our bikes and feel like we have earned some of that mulled wine and chestnuts on our return. ... Read More
In The Court of the King – An Evening with Sean Kelly
For a man who made a career of letting his legs rather than his mouth do the talking, An Evening with Sean Kelly at Cadence Performance in Crystal Palace this week could easily have been a painful experience for both speaker and audience. Kelly makes no secret of the fact that he is not a natural raconteur but he was most certainly a natural competitor ... Read More
Bonne Anniversaire – Stephen Roche
Happy Birthday Triple Crown Winner Stephen Roche World Champion – 1987 TdF Winner - 1987 Giro D’Italia Winner – 1987 Roche climbed to the very summit of the cycling world when he capped off his Annus Mirabilis with the World Championship win. ... Read More
Bonne Anniversaire – Bernard Hinault
Happy Birthday Blaireau World Champion – 1980 TdF Winner - 1978, ’79, ’81, ’82, ’85 Giro D’Italia Winner – 1980, ’82, ’85 L-B-L – 1977, ’80; Lombardia – 1979, ’84 Sporting crash-blackened eyes and baring his teeth in that familiar set-jawed snarl, The Badger takes on all-comers and ends up on top again in ’85 ... Read More
The Off Season (or What the Hell Do We Do Now?)
The absence of competitive road cycling from mid October has not really been a big issue for me in the past. As a kid and then as a teenager I only followed the Tour de France and never even considered the fact that cycling had a wider season which waxed and waned around it. The Tour was everything and everything was the Tour. It was ... Read More
Foreign Starts – Grand Tours on Tour
With both the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia set to start outside of their own borders next year it seems like a good time to have a look at this increasingly regular phenomenon. In 2014 the Giro will spend three days in Ireland during May, visiting both Belfast and Dublin, before Le Tour comes to Yorkshire, Cambridge and London in July. Whilst the ... Read More
One Steppe at a Time – (Not) Cycling in Moscow
I am in Moscow this week and I’m trying to remember the last occasion I was in such a cycling un-friendly city. It’s got me stumped. I have covered a fair few global miles in my time and cannot readily think of a single place – certainly not another capital city – where I would be less inclined to get my bike out and tootle ... Read More
The Mavericks – Adam Hansen – Seventh Heaven for Grand Tour Glutton
Lotto Bellisol’s Adam Hansen has just completed his seventh straight Grand Tour. Since late 2011 he has ridden the Giro and the Tour twice each and La Vuelta three times – all without a break. He has covered almost 24,000 Grand Tour kilometres in those 2 years and raced an incredible total of 16,059km over 106 days last year alone. In an era of ever increased targeting of races ... Read More
Buen Compleanno – Fausto Coppi
Happy Birthday Fausto Coppi “Il Campionissimo” 1919 – 1960 Giro Winner – 1940, 47, 49, 52, 53; Tour de France Winner – 1949, 52; World Champion 1953 ... Read More
Bonne Anniversaire – Robert Millar
Happy Birthday Robert Millar TdF King of the Mountains 1984 ... Read More
Tour de France – Final Roundup – nothing artificial about this race (except the ‘fireworks’)
In the end the promised finale fireworks never came. Not from the top of the Arc de Triomphe after the evening stage on Sunday, where we given a projected feu artifice lightshow instead of some actual gunpowder explosions (the whole show was greeted with polite bemusement rather than rapture in our house), and not from the last few days of racing either where the assumption ... Read More
Tour de France – Stage 15 Roundup – Bang, Froome, straight to the Moon.
The second rest day of the Tour de France marks, for us armchair followers at least, the beginning of the end. Sure, those guys on the bikes still have a mind-bending amount of cycling to do, but if the 3 weeks of the Tour was condensed into just one stage (like when TV scientists cram the whole of Earth’s existence into just one year and ... Read More
Tour de France – Stage 9 roundup – “Cycling, Bloody Hell!”
As Alex Ferguson sort of once said: “Cycling, Bloody Hell!” Or as Johnny Rotten didn’t quite say once either: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been treated?” What an epic weekend! The Pyrenees were meant to play second fiddle to the Alps this year; only two stages and none of the hoo-ha of Mt Ventoux or Alpe d’Huez. I’ll tell you what ... Read More
Yorkshire’s Grand Depart – Countdown commencement
A year from today, July 5th 2014, the Tour de France will roll out from Leeds – it’s most Northerly, and perhaps least likely starting point ever. Last December Yorkshire won the bid to host the 2014 Grand Depart, beating competition from much more apparently obvious choices such as Florence, Berlin and Barcelona (as well as the less immediately obvious choice of Venice…. Hello? Canals?). Succesfully ... Read More
Tour de France – Day 4 roundup – Full Banana and Peas
So Corsica is done and La Grande Boucle is back on the mainland. Not that anyone should have cause to regret the three days offshore. We have been treated to sumptuous scenery, occaisonal high farce, and none too shabby racing.. Plus all the press pundits’ expectations and predictions have had to be tossed overboard on the ferry journey to Nice.. Nice. No wins for CVNDSH ... Read More
It Begins.. Tour de France 2013 Preview
They say that “Good things come to those who wait.” And we have waited. Oh yes, we’ve waited. We’ve waited through the Olympics, through the Vuelta, through the off season and then we’ve waited some more through the Tours of Down Under, Qatar and Oman. We’ve waited through the Classics and the Giro – though they were much more diverting than the ... Read More