Tag: RTTC

Last year at this time, life was ice cream and fairies for Dan Fleeman; he'd won the Tour of the Pyrenees; Cervelo Test Team had snapped him up and a start in a Grand Tour looked like a formality. But pro cycling is an unforgiving sport, and 2009 didn't go according to the script for the likeable man from Lichfield.

Snapshots from the Gent Six Day 2012, as we roam around the city and spend time with the winners in the bar.

George Atkins was a name that suddenly appeared on the Scottish scene back in the summer. And on Sunday the versatile man from Leicester took silver in the British U23 Time Trial Championships, but before his foray into the world of riding 'alone and unpaced', he spent six weeks in Flanders, so naturally we needed to have a word with him, not long before the British Champs.

Originally we hadn’t planned to go down to The Scottish Borders to see Stage Two of the Tour of Britain 2022 – but the sun came out, we made a few time calculations and as I said of yesterday; ‘it’s not every day you get the chance to see some of the world’s best bike riders on home soil.’ One of life’s simple pleasures is surely sitting on the grass verge in the sunshine, waiting on a bike race coming up the hill.

It's 10:00 pm and we've just finished dinner in our 'local' at Cangas de Onis, we were here last night too. The Mahou is cold, the food is good and the wi-fi is free. It's a working dinner, words and pictures get dealt with in between patatas bravas and chorizo. 'Lagos de Covadonga' - one of the Vuelta legends.

Giro d'Italia 2012 - First Rest Day, but now there's a misnomer; 'rest day.' But 'day to facilitate huge transfer which we have to carry out after our money spinning exercise in Denmark' doesn't quite roll off the tongue as easily. Let's go back to the reason the UCI introduced two rest days into Grant Tours, along with regulations to govern stage and total race lengths. There's a clue in the name, 'rest' - it was part of a raft of measures designed to lessen the stresses and strains on the riders. Read; 'stop them having to kit up.' But rest days have now become a vehicle for crazy transfers.