Tag: British Records

It's the start of the season proper with UCI World Tour Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday and UCI 1.1 HC Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on Sunday. It was a tad savage when the alarm blasted at 03:10 on Friday but on the other side of the scales we were on Belgian soil bright and early.

"Entrepreneurs on the Saddle" is the first of several excerpts from my book "The Cycling Professor", to give you a flavour of the topics I discuss in it. Thanks to the guys at VeloVeritas for the opportunity to do this.

It’s that time again when I go from being that old weirdo who’s always going to bike races no one has heard of to the ‘go to guy’ (I do hate that expression) – yeah, you’ve guessed; 'Brailsford, corticosteroids, package, Sky, Wiggo'... I’ve lived through all the doping scandals; Festina, Riis, Pantani, Lance, Tyler, Floyd and the fact is that just like that 1976 disco classic by Bugatti and Musker contends, ‘Ain’t no Smoke Without Fire.’ The pattern is always the same, revelation, vehement denial, steady drip of more damning facts and finally there’s a tearful confession or a ‘guilty’ verdict.

21 year-old Linlithgow ‘cross man’ Cameron Mason who rides for Trinity Racing has been cementing his place as one of the top u23 ‘cross riders in the world. Cameron wasn’t among the frozen cabbage fields and sand dunes of Flanders when we spoke, he was down in sunny Calpe on the Mediterranean to ‘top up’ on his endurance training.

Bonjour! It's that time - there's only one game in town and it's called, 'Le Tour'. Ken Livingston's ego trip and the stages Viktor calls; "watchin' paint dry!" are behind us, so are the Alps. Tomorrow it's the first time trial then it's the Pyrennes; sprinter and transition stages; the final tt and Paris. God-willing, we'll be there all the way. We arrived at Perpignan around 6.00, local time, it's nearly 9.00 now and we've still got our accreditation to collect at Castres. Wheels for the trip, is a Renault Clio, the air-con and stereo and iPod work, that's all you need really.

The Davie Bell Memorial – a great race, but VeloVeritas can't be everywhere and we had to choose between Ayrshire and Fife, where the National ‘50’ was being fought out. Being a couple of old testers, we went for the ‘50’ – but we didn’t forget about the Davie Bell. We decided we best have a word with the winner – a young man who comes all the way from South Africa by way of Belgium and Spain; Christopher Jennings