Tag: Scottish Professional

Raleigh professional Evan Oliphant handled the age old dilemma of the pro racing against amateurs – if they don’t win they’re criticised, but if they do then it’s ‘expected’ – by taking the best option and winning the Gala CC’s Gordon Arms Hilly Time Trial over 20.5 cold and cloudy Borders miles in 50:06; some ways short of Mark Atkinson’s (Velo Ecosse) 1999 course record of 48:47 but enough to give him the result by 41 seconds over Carl Donaldson (GS Metro).

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.

One of the biggest professional kermises in Flanders is the Gullegem Koerse, first held in 1942 when Belgian legend Marcel Kindt claimed victory. Since then it’s been won by many of the hardest kermis riders in the game – Willy Tierlinck, Wilfried Nelissen, Nico Eeckhout, Gert Omloop to name a few. Not to mention some of the best roadmen of their eras; including Nico Mattan, Peter Van Petegem and Philippe Gilbert. And for this year’s edition we can boast of a Scottish winner in Andy Fenn – well, his mum is Scottish and he rode the Commonwealth Games for us in Delhi.

Usher Silver Tankard Nostalgia: “describes a sentimental longing for the past” defines the dictionary. I’m not one to sit and say that everything was better when I was a youngster – bikes certainly weren’t; much of the equipment available was scrap and would get laughed out of court in 2013. Cycling clothing was horrible and cycling shoes were positively medieval. Albeit cars were cooler, music was better and so was the cycling scene.

If we interviewed ‘Jamesie’ McCallum, we couldn’t very well neglect his friend and training partner, Britain’s most northerly professional rider – Wick’s Evan Oliphant. This will be his ninth professional season and his second with Raleigh.

Ever-versatile Endura man, Evan Oliphant crammed just about every discipline into last weekend - criterium, Premier one day and a British grass track title. We had a word...

Kristian House of Rapha-Condor won, Chris Froome was man of the match and there was plenty of sunshine. That's the British Champs in a nutshell, it really was a great day.

What's happening at Plowman Craven, but I guess we should say 'Madison', now? With Scots professionals Evan Oliphant and Ross Creber on their books, we thought we'd best find out what's going on.

Endura Racing Team launch... "Hi Ed, I've finally heard from Cycling Weekly - they want 300 words, but also if you want to do "Minute With" interviews with some of the riders, that'd be good also." Jeez! Work from "The Comic" and a brief too.

Here at VeloVeritas we felt that those Endura Racing boys would be giving us plenty to write about in 2009, so we thought we'd better sit them down with them and have a few words. As well as Jonathan McBain (owner of Pedal Power Cycles) and a lean and fit looking Gary Hand, a keen as mustard James McCallum was there too; so it turned into a lot of words!

"It is quite noisy when your head's scraping along the ice !" Craig Maclean's answer to our question as to whether it's noisy in a two man bobsleigh. What's the former World Team Sprint gold medallist and Individual Sprint silver medallist doing in a bobsleigh? Read on!

We've been stalking him since Beijing; and at last, we've cracked him - Chris Hoy, Olympic gold medallist in the team sprint, keirin and individual sprint. We've heard that he now retains Max Clifford, "PR guru to the stars," as his agent, so we decided we'd better check out the financial aspect of the interview, first.

Nine World and Eight Olympic titles; that's Team GB's haul for 2008 - so far, that is. That kind of excellence doesn't 'just happen,' who's behind it? The GB head coach is Aussie, Shane Sutton - he was still in Beijing the day after his squad's triumphant campaign ended, when we spoke to him.

Craig Maclean has nine golds and two silvers. That's what Team GB took away from the Manchester World Track Championships, back in April. A repeat performance in Beijing is entirely possible. How does British Cycling do it? One of the reasons is that their selection criteria is ruthless; past glory counts for nothing.

He's won the World Kilometre Championship four times, the World Team Sprint Championship twice, the World Keirin Championship twice, and now he's completed an unequalled sprinters' "quadruple" by winning the World Individual Sprint Championship...Oh - and he's the reigning Olympic Kilometre Champion as well! He's Scotland's Chris Hoy, and after we'd told him how proud we are of him, he took time to answer our questions.

You're the Olympic kilometre champion, but the 'powers that be' decide to remove the event from the programme at the next Olympics-what do you do? If you're Chris Hoy, you go out and transform yourself into the best keirin rider in the world!

"I knew that if I was second or third round the last corner then nobody would beat me." And so it proved, as James McCallum added British Criterium Championship gold to Commonwealth Games points bronze, last night in Otley. VeloVeritas spoke to James just hours after his win.

It's been a while since we spoke to our friendly Scottish Pro Evan Oliphant, so we figured this was a good time to get a progress report for the season so far, how life is treating him in Belgium and the setup in the new DFL team.

It's just under two weeks now until the 2007 European season starts with the GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise in the south of France on February 6th. The first major tests come a few weeks later though, on the first weekend in March, far from the Mediterranean, to the north, in Flanders. Het Volk and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne are true classics in all but UCI category, albeit shorter than the Tour of Flanders with which they share many kilometres of parcours.

After a year at DFL, 23 year-old Scottish professional Alex Coutts from Gorebridge, has renewed old sponsorship links with Flemish bike concern, Flanders. We caught-up with him recently at mentor John Anderson's Edinburgh shop, the Bicycleworks. Coutts was just back from a training trip to Spain and is already looking like he is ready for action.