The pursuit race is the ultimate battle of man against the clock and, in the end, man against man. Once upon the time the pursuit champion was the king of the boards and everyone would know his name. Australian Steele Bishop was one of those men of the '80s.

Former World Scratch and Madison Champion, rapid roadman sprinter, not to mention Berlin, Bremen, Copenhagen, Ghent and Grenoble Six Day winner, Denmark’s Alex Rasmussen happens to be Zwift’s ‘man in Scandinavia’ – no-one better to ask about e-racing.

When we’re not keeping an eye on what’s happening in Northern Europe we have a peek at what’s happening down in la Bella Italia. A young man by the name of Tim James has been posting some solid results down there in the hard fought u23 classics as part of that enthusiastic and characterful man Flavio Zappi’s team.

VeloVeritas caught up with that versatile man, newly crowned Scottish 10 Mile TT Champion, Kyle Gordon [RT23] the day after his near 30 mph ride on the exposed dual carriageway west of Dundee on a bitterly cold Sunday morning.

Two course records obliterated within days of each other over the Easter weekend? It could only be that man John Archibald (Ribble Pro Cycling). It’s good to see he’s put a disappointing Worlds pursuit behind him - and the margins he’s breaking course records by takes VeloVeritas back to those ‘Obree Days’ when every weekend produced another ‘wow!’

Irish professional, 23 year-old Rory Townsend (Canyon dhb p/b Bloor Homes) took third in the UCI 1.1 French Cup, Classic Loire-Atlantique behind French riders, winner Rudy Barbier (Israel Cycling Academy) and man-on-form, multiple recent podium finisher, Marc Sarreau (Groupama-FDJ). We caught up with Rory to hear his tale, before he won the East Cleveland Klondike GP and - just today - finished third in the Rutland – Melton International CiCLE Classic...

Christina Mackenzie is holder of the British ladies veteran [41 years-old] 24 hour record with 431.64 miles – and she’s currently preparing for an attempt on the End to End, or LEJOG (Lands End to John O’Groats), all 874 miles and 10,373 metres climbing of it. We got in touch to find out more...

Recently we ran a piece about Dave Viner’s efforts to get an indoor velodrome built for Birmingham. ‘Unknowns to us’ at the time, there’s a similar project trying to get off the ground much closer to home – the City on the Ness to be specific. We spoke to Mike Greaves, one of the men behind the project...

It’s been a year since we last spoke to Jake Stewart, he’d just finished second in the u23 Gent-Wevelgem and taken third spot in the Italian Trofeo Piva; since then he’s been round the u23 ‘Peace Race,’ ridden the Ronde de L’Oise, Tour Alsace, Tour de L’Avenir, jumped ship on British Cycling programmes, joined the Equipe continentale Groupama-FDJ and already won a race in France.

Rudy Pevenage was the man behind Jan Ulrich and guided him to a Tour de France win and many other successes, but let's not forget he was a top rider in his own Pro career. Not much has been heard of the man from Moerbeke recently, so we looked him up on one of our visits to Belgium for the Omloop...

He’s been CTT 10, 25, 50 and 100 mile champion, he’s been British 25 and 50 mile record holder; he’s been away but now he’s back. When we saw he’d recently won the Eddy Soens Memorial Race some 20 years after he’d first won it, we thought to ourselves; ‘maybe need to have a word with old Mister Matthew Bottrill, aka ‘The Flying Postman, it’s been a year or two since last we chatted’

Here at VeloVeritas whilst we have the utmost respect for John Archibald and his performances we didn’t seek any pre-Worlds interviews from him, his sister Katie, Neah Evans or Mark Stewart. We felt that the ‘they just need to turn up and ride then bring home the rainbow jerseys’ vibe was putting them under pressure – of which they would experience more than enough in the cauldron of Pruszkow. We let the dust settle post-Worlds, gave John a call and found how it went...

The last time we spoke to 22 year-old Englishman Matt Gibson he’d just won the European u23 Scratch Championship. Since then he’s gravitated away from the track spending the last two seasons with John Herety’s JLT-Condor team.

One of the big success stories of 2018 was that of 22 year-old Welshman, Stevie Williams who returned stellar u23 results and netted himself a World Tour contract with Bahrain-Merida alongside the likes of Grand Tour ‘triple crown’ and Primavera/Lombardia winner, Vincenzo Nibali and World Time Trial Champion, Rohan Dennis.

Here at VeloVeritas we keep clear of politics but this seemed like a worthwhile cause to us: the 2022 Commonwealth Games will be held in Birmingham BUT the track cycling events will take place in London. It didn’t seem right to us and we spoke to campaigner for a track in Brum, former racing cyclist, Dave Viner about the situation...

We caught up with Joe after his Boxing Day training ride (I can just about remember those, up into North Fife with Dave Chapman for a couple of hours then home for steak pie at Mum’s)... Here’s what he had to say:

One of the things that’s good about FaceBook is seeing those old pictures from the 70’s when cars, music and especially bike racing were all cooler than they are today. Recently, there have been some nice pictures of those Regent boys and that got me to thinking about the omnipresent Clan McGinty. A quick message to Steven of that ilk followed and we hope you like what he had to say as much as we did...

It doesn’t seem like it but it was season 2017 when last we spoke to Ross Lamb, a David Rayner Fund man ‘doing good’ in The Flatlands. Flanders gets under a man’s skin so we were surprised to hear he was moving to La Belle France – that said, times are tough with teams folding everywhere from the UK to Columbia and all points in between. But that was our first question...

The end of an era for sure – no big Matt Brammeier in the pro peloton for season 2019? It seems like he’s been around forever but is actually only 33 years-old. We couldn’t let that pass without taking a wander through his long and varied career; GB junior and u23 champion then a change of nationality thanks to Irish grandparents which brought four consecutive Irish Elite Road Titles against men like Nico Roche, Dan Martin and Philip Deignan.

Stuart Balfour’s win in the supporting u23 race to the GP Ouest France Plouay, one of the most prestigious amateur in France, was special. The Dave Rayner Fund thought so too and made him their ‘Rider of the Year.’ As well as his Plouay success he won in Montpichon and at the Ronde Briochine; he was top 20 in the tough Kreiz Breizh UCI stage race and top 10 in the Tour de la Manche.