November 9, 2011

The perfect cyclist – A jack of all trades

One of the most interesting things about cycling compared to most other sports are the different disciplines that any given rider can take part in – road racing, time-trialling, mountain biking, track racing and cyclo-cross.

Stephen Roche once said that “maybe it is a view of a dreamer but I have always believed that a complete bike racer should be able to ride on the flat, in the mountains, in the time trials and on the track.”

Not long after Roche finished third in the 1985 Tour de France at the age of 25, he rode the Paris six-day race on the track with the British rider Tony Doyle. Roche crashed and hurt his knee, an injury which would plague him for the rest of his career.

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October 7, 2011

World champion team-mates

By winning the World Championship road race in Denmark, Mark Cavendish became only the second British rider to wear the rainbow jersey after Tom Simpson in 1965. But this coming weekend the world’s best sprinter has a chance to achieve what no rider, Brit or otherwise, has ever achieved – win Paris-Tours as World Champion.

Unlike most other one-day races, the World Championships road race takes place on a different route every year. Often it is won by riders who could be classed as ‘sprinters’. To illustrate, recent winners of the rainbow jersey include Mario Cipollini, Oscar Freire, Tom Boonen, Thor Hushovd and now Mark Cavendish.

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November 23, 2010

Cyclo-Cross is Great

Zdenek Stybar - Current cyclo-cross World Champion

(The following is as much an appeal for information as it is an imparting of knowledge. If I’ve made any glaring errors (or indeed, any minor errors) please let me know, as I’m on a steep learning curve at the moment and need all the help I can get).

Taking an interest in a new sport can be as daunting as it is exciting. Usually, it’s quite straight forward to learn the rules of a sport. There will always be obscure rules which only present themselves in very specific scenarios, but in general, following what’s going on is simple. What isn’t simple though is figuring out what events and competitions are important, which are the most prestigious, which are the ones everybody wants to win, where does each event fit in with the sport’s calendar as a whole?

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