Tag: Chinese Races

Up at 04:30, the plan was to get the bus from Porty at 09:00 - however, and to cut a long story short, the van is abandoned in a western suburb of Edinburgh and a cab was flagged down to get me to the airport on time. The flight was undramatic - thank God - and there was Kris in the airport bus park, with the camper. It's seems to be an unwritten law that you have to arrive in a different country from where the race is; so the rendez-vous was in Geneva, Switzerland.

So I've been meaning to put together a blog post of my latest experiences of life here in Flanders. This season has certainly had its ups and downs, but all this seems rather irrelevant after the events of this week. Cycling indeed has its fair share of tragedies and the death of Wouter Weylandt in Stage 3 of the Giro this year is another one added to that list.

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.

Cycling never ceases to amaze me; Frenchman Kevin Sireau’s 200 metre record of 9.572 seconds set in Moscow in 2009 looked ‘on the shelf’ – as did his compatriot Arnaud Tournant’s kilometre record of 58.875 set in La Paz in 2001. But one man didn’t just break both records within virtually hours of each other – he destroyed them. François Pervis rode a 9.347 for the 200 to take two tenths off Sireau’s time – a huge margin at this level. And not satisfied with that, he then took two-and-a-half seconds off Tournant’s time in winning the kilometre, also in the Aguascalientes World Cup meeting, in an incredible 56.303.

Season 2013 wasn't great for Timmy - his contract with the Canadian Spidertech team came to naught when the team collapsed, and his year ended almost before it started with a bad crash in the Tour Down Under and a season spent trying to find his real form with Saxo-Tinkoff. Despite a verbal agreement with Cannondale for 2014 the man from Colorado decided to call ‘time’ on his career. Duggan took time chat to VeloVeritas as the races he used to ride started without him...

In the language of the Gael, Glasgow is, ‘The Dear Green Place,’ on Sunday for the European Road race Championship 2018 it was certainly ‘green’ – we’re not do sure about ‘dear’ though; it was grey, miserable, and wet – just plain DREICH. But we still love the city – last time we went west for the Commonwealth Games Road Race, this time we decided to get soaked in the East End.