Tag: Glasgow Nightingale Cycling Club

We look at the popularity of Sportives in this article. In 2014, both the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia will visit the UK. The 2011 World Road Race Champion was a British rider and the current Tour de France champion is British also.

Hamish Haynes is one of British cycling's 'forgotten men.' Whilst Cycling Weekly tells us about the successes of the U23 Academy riders in Italy, ex-British Elite Champion Hamish just gets on with the job, competing against some of the best riders in Belgium week in and week out. His recent win in the prestigous Reningelst event went unrecorded. Pete Slater at SIS has been helping Hamish with nutrition this year - no 'freebees' though, even Daniel Bennati pays for his 'Go bars' - we thought it would be a good topic to discuss with a man who regularly pushes his body to it's limits.

Stage Five of the Tour of Korea was a historic one - the first ever win for an Ethiopian rider at this level; youngster, Tsgabu Grmay of South Africa’s first Pro Continental team, MTN-Qhubeka powered by Samsung. This year has seen the man from Mekele, 2,000 metres up in the Tigrayan Highlands of Etiopia land a top ten GC placing in the Tour of Langkawi as well as second on GC in Taiwan to go with his stage win. We caught up with him upon his return to Europe to ride the Tour of Trentino.

Daniel Friebe's book, "Jan Ullrich, the best there never was" covers his career and life in great detail with many interviews with his coach, Peter Becker and two of the men who attempted to manage their brilliant but erratic charge, Rudy Pevenage and Walter Godefroot - who no longer exchange Christmas cards - not to mention many of his Telekom team mates, and of course there’s the other ‘stuff’; Ullrich’s addictions to alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, sex; and most damaging of all, for a man whose job involves riding a bicycle up mountains - food.

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.

Snakes and Ladders; Let’s be positive and start with the guys on the way up; 17 year-old Englishman Thomas Pidcock for instance, who won the European Junior Cyclo-Cross Championship in France recently. He’s now one of the favourites for the Worlds in Luxembourg come late January; he was fifth in the Worlds last year and is a year wiser and stronger. But if there are ladders then there are snakes, too. It’s over Matt Goss; he won a World Team Pursuit Title, Grand Tour Stages, a Worlds Elite Road race Silver, Plouay and – The Primavera. That last result means he’s a Legend.