Tag: British Track Championships

The alarm went at 06.00 this morning, we're driving the full stage today, all the way from Orthez to the top of the Col d'Aubisque, that's 218.5 kilometres with a 3rd, two 1st and two hors categorie climbs. It's 07.45, and we're trying to exit the autoroute at Orthez, but Tour traffic is clogging the toll plaza, in the midst of all this are Marge, Homer, Bart and Lisa Simpson, on their four-up bike. They are advertising their movie, on the Tour publicity caravan, I wonder where the wee one is? - transpires that Marge is carrying her, none of them have a helmet on, either.

I forgot to turn off the message alert on my BlackBerry and it started beeping away just before 04:00 am – it didn’t matter, I was awake anyway. The aphids had breached my defences and the irritation of the bites had wakened me. The French, Danish and Netherlands teams all showed themselves in the Junior Road Race World Championships 2013 - as Androni manager Gianni Savio always says; ‘you must honour the race!’ - with Franck Bonnamour away with Colombian Martinez in the closing stages.

32.4 km, 212m ascent today, in the stage to Praia de Pedrogão. What a FARCE. My TT bike was exactly at the right length when I came to this race, yet at the prologue they told me it was 1cm past the limit... It was duly cut and shortened.

Bikes of the Tour de France, 2008: Bicycles, we love them! With the Tour well underway, we thought it would be interesting to take a first look at some of the bikes being used by the teams making the news. When we join the race next week we will of course be bringing you more bike-geek articles!

"Super Grinta," Denis, Roma and Ignatas Konovalovas. That was what the Gazzetta said about Danilo after the Vesuvio stage; "grinta" is the quality of physical and mental toughness that the true greats have - "Super Grinta" - great expression.

This is the least favourite part of having our own wee website; writing the obituaries of bright young men with most of their lives still ahead of them. This past week we lost Lewis Oliphant, perhaps best known for his exploits on the grass track. At VeloVeritas we knew Lewis but couldn't claim to know him well; what we've done then is to ask for people who were close to let us have their tributes.