Cyclopedia. Part 16

Thanks to early innovations such as thumbshifting gear levers, and SPD clipless off-road pedals-double sided, with small, st.u.r.dy plates that did not clog up with mud, brought out in 1991-Shimano was already dominant in the burgeoning mountain-bike market, with the road-oriented Campagnolo never producing anything that challenged their inventive Deore and XTR groupsets.

Shimano did not win a major Tour until 1988, when Andy Hampsten won the GIRO D'ITALIA, and their first TOUR DE FRANCE win came in 1999 with LANCE ARMSTRONG, whose seven successive Tour wins cemented their position in the road market. In 2002, Shimano-equipped bikes won all three Grand Tours. By 2009, their range included electric gears on the range-topping Dura3Ace group, using a battery about the size of a mobile phone power unit, and biodynamic chain rings, reshaped so they were not exactly oval, but almost diamond-shaped with rounded corners.

SIMPSON, Tom, (b. England, 1937, d. 1967) Dapper, daring, and charismatic, Simpson was the first cyclist from GREAT BRITAIN to make a major impact on European professional racing. A coal miner's son whose early hero was FAUSTO COPPI he won a bronze medal in the Melbourne Olympics of 1956 then moved from his home in Nottinghamshire in 1959 to the town of Saint-Brieuc in Brittany to avoid national service.

He rapidly became one of the stars of the pro circuit thanks to victories in CLa.s.sICS such as the Tour of FLANDERS in 1961, BordeauxParis in 1963, MILANSAN REMO in 1964, and the GIRO DI LOMBARDIA in 1965, the year he became the first-and to date the only-Briton to win the world road-race championship. Simpson was also the first Briton to wear the yellow jersey of the TOUR DE FRANCE, for a single day in the 1962 race. Those wins earned him the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1965.

Watching and Reading Tom Simpson: =.

Major Tom, (Chris Sidwells, Mousehold Press 2000), retells the story from his nephew's perspective Cycling Is My Life (Tom Simpson, Yellow Jersey, 2009) is the re-issue of Simpson's ghosted 1966 autobiography Put Me Back on My Bike (William Fotheringham, reissued Yellow Jersey, 2007) is the best-selling Simpson book Death on the Mountain is an award-winning BBC doc.u.mentary from 2007 Something to Aim At is a personal collection of interviews and archive material by the film-buff Ray Pascoe, as is The World of Tom Simpson Wheels Within Wheels is a more recent DVD of Simpson-related interviews (SEE ALSO POETRY FOR A SIMPSON-INSPIRED WORK).

Simpson won hearts for his "all or nothing" racing style and his showmanship, be it posing in silly hats or performing stunts for the crowds on his bike. He was celebrated for posing for photographs wearing a sharp suit and bowler hat and carrying an umbrella in the style of Major Thompson, an "Englishman abroad" created by French writer Pierre Daninos.

He was also a dreamer whose ambitions included owning a train and who was determined to create the best living he could for his wife, Helen, and their two children. He died on July 13, 1967, in the Tour de France after collapsing on Mont Ventoux (see ALPS) in baking heat while under the influence of amphetamines and alcohol. His MEMORIAL still stands near the top of the mountain, bearing the words "Olympic medallist, world champion and British sporting amba.s.sador."

SIX-DAY RACING Born of the 19th-century vogue for marathon events, and once hugely popular in America, these track races now exist on the margins.

The first six-day cycling race was held at the Islington Agricultural Hall in November 1878: the riders simply rode for as long as they could within the six days and the fastest of the dozen men in the field was one Bill Cann from Sheffield, who covered 1,060 miles, losing seven pounds in the process.

The concept was exported to America where the crowds took ghoulish pleasure in watching the riders' suffering: the final sessions, when the riders were in a zombielike state, would often sell out. The events were exercises in sleep deprivation, with SOIGNEURS providing stimulants to keep their charges awake for as long as possible.

The New York Times of December 10, 1897, described the winner of a Madison Square Garden Six, Charles W. Miller, as "drawn and haggard, his eyes sunk and inflamed ... the cruel chafing of the saddle had sunk deep into his flesh." Major TAYLOR, the legendary African American sprinter, scheduled one hour's sleep in eight in his first six. The helpers would cook food for the riders in a small enclosure in the track center; their charges would eat from the pot as they rode and throw it back when it was empty. At one point at the end of the race, a hallucinating Taylor was convinced he was being chased by a man with a knife.

By the end of the 1890s, rules were put in place to limit the riders to 1218 hours a day on the track; to get round this, organizers brought in two-man teams. The result was the invention of the "Madison"-named after the arena at Madison Square Garden, purpose-built for cycle racing-in which one rider would circle the track resting while the other raced for a short while before grabbing his partner's hand and "throwing" him up to racing speed. The introduction of points for intermediate sprints counting toward the final standings made the races more lively and resulted in the typical team composition being a sprinter and a stayer. That remains the case today, typified by the GREAT BRITAIN world championship winners in 2008, MARK CAVENDISH and BRADLEY WIGGINS (see their separate entries and GREAT BRITAIN and OLYMPIC GAMES for more on both of them).

In the early years of the 20th century, six-day racing was a lucrative business in the US and Europe, with fees of up to $1,000 a day going to top performers such as the Canadian William "Torchy" Peden and Reggie "the Iron-Man" MacNamara of Australia, famed for having cut off his own finger with a hatchet when he was bitten by a poisonous snake in the bush.

The events attracted celebrities such as Bing Crosby, who was rumored to pay the hospital bills of cyclists who crashed, actors like Douglas Fairbanks, the opera singer Enrico Caruso, and the actress Peggy Joyce. Al Capone might turn up to offer $100 primes.

Six-day racing in the US began to die off in the Depression of the 1930s; in Europe sixes continue, mainly in Germany. They consist of a series of evening sessions over six days, usually lasting into the wee hours, with an overall cla.s.sification based on the Madison sessions and a variety of other events (see TRACK RACING) that keep the crowds happy and count for points toward the overall standings.

The biggest winner in six-day racing is the Belgian PATRICK SERCU, who formed a dominant team together with Holland's Peter Post through the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Only one British cyclist has been a consistent six-day winner in recent years: the pursuiter Tony Doyle, who made up a strong team with Australia's Danny Clark for 19 of his 23 wins. The events now exist on the margins, as the UCI prefers to see World Cup meets that act as buildup toward the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS and Olympic Games, and it's uncertain how long they will survive now that the Madison has lost its status as an Olympic event in 2012.

SLANG.

* Abdu': any sprinter who crashes because they won't look where they're going or who throws his bike from side to side in an exaggerated way. (See ABDUZHAPAROV to learn the origin of this term.) * Baked: over-trained.

* Ben Hur: a crash caused, unintentionally or otherwise, by a part of one riders bike jamming the spokes of another rider's wheel.

* Big meat: large gear, large chainring.

* Bonk: running out of energy and fuel during a race or ride, which causes a severe reductions in one's ability to produce power. Also known as knock or hungerknock.

* Broomwagon: vehicle that travels last in a race convoy to gather up riders who drop out.

* Bunny-hop: jumping the bike over an obstacle by lifting the front wheel and using upward force in the pedals to pull up the rear wheel. Road racers do it to avoid potholes and (in Belgium) to switch between pavement and asphalt; mountain bikers do it over most obstacles.

* Cat. 5 tattoo: a grease mark left on a rider's leg by a chainring or chain. Also known as a rookie mark.

* Convoy: the cavalcade of team vehicles behind a major race ("use the convoy").

* Diesel: a racing cyclist who rides mainly at a steady pace and finds sudden sprints hard to handle.

* Feathering: braking technique where rapid, frequent application of the brakes avoids skidding.

* Flick: make a sudden movement to one side to discourage opponent in a sprint. Also used as a general term for deceiving, tricking an opponent or teammate, or being ripped off by a sponsor (he flicked me, I got flicked).

* Fred: a disparaging term used by racers for a cyclist who they regard as being beneath them in status or ability. A Fred can be a novice rider with no obvious skill but costly clothing and equipment. More commonly it is someone with profoundly unfashionable or dated gear, often a bicycle commuter. May well have a Cat. 5 tattoo.

* Granny gear: derogatory term for a very low gear, often attained by the use of a...

* Granny Ring: the smallest chainring of a triple chainset.

* Hairnet: crash hat made of leather strips used before sh.e.l.l helmets became vogue.

* Hammerhead: a rider who maintains a relentlessly high pace.

* Hand-sling: maneuver in TRACK RACING where one rider "throws" the other into the action.

* Honk: to ride out of the saddle on a climb.

* Juice: dope (juicer: a rider who dopes).

* Lead-out, lead-out man: in a sprint, two cyclists from the team will organize themselves so the slower man sets the pace in the final kilometer until the sprinter can make his effort. In major races, a team will all work to keep the pace high until the last lead-out man can launch the sprinter.

* Lunched: an irreparably broken component, particularly an expensive one.

* Mafia: When riders from several different teams combine their efforts in order to control a race, then share the prize money.

* Meet the man with the hammer: blow up, or get the bonk.

* Pretzeled: severe damage to a frame or wheel.

* Retrogrouch: a rider who eschews the latest in equipment.

* Ride on mineral water: to race without using drugs.

* Road rash: skin abrasions caused by a fall (also known as gravel rash).

* Sandbag: Not giving as much effort as you are capable of when you are supposed to be pulling on the front for your team in order to save energy and seek individual glory in the final stage of the race.

* Sh.e.l.led, spat out, shat out: all terms used for getting left behind by the pack, usually due to bonk or meeting the man with the hammer.

* Sitting in: getting shelter in the pack or behind the break as a wheelsucker might.

* Snake bite: a flat usually caused by an underinflated tire.

* Squirrel: an erratic bike handler whose twitchy riding can cause crashes.

* Swag or schwag: merchandise offered as prizes, items given to riders by sponsors free of charge. Pro and sometimes even amateur riders get swag bags from sponsors at the start of each season.

* Swanny: English variant on SOIGNEUR, French, team helper or carer.

* Switch: a sideways move like a flick but more sustained, preventing opponent from coming past.

* Tacoed: see pretzeled.

* Time bonus: used in stage racing, when seconds may be deducted from the overall time of riders who place in the first three in the stage, or at intermediate sprints.

* Track stand: holding the bike motionless by balancing the force of the pedals against gravity or the brakes. Most often seen in track sprinting, where one rider may stand still to force the other to take the lead. Skilled road cyclists can do this at traffic lights.

* Un.o.btanium: what any obscenely expensive bike part is made of.

* Water-carrier: team rider (French domestique).

* Weight weenie: cyclist who is obsessed with getting his bike as light as possible without sparing his cash.

* Wheelsucker: a rider who doesn't contribute to a break or who "sits in" in the pack all day, only emerging for the final sprint.

(FOR A GLOSSARY OF RACING-SPECIFIC TERMS, SEE FRENCH, THE LINGUA FRANCA OF EUROPEAN RACING).

SOIGNEUR For a century, these men were the eminences grises of professional cycling, providing ma.s.sage, magic remedies, and advice to the riders. There were no qualifications other than who a soigneur had worked with. They began working life as gravediggers, fishmongers, and bus drivers. Knowledge was handed down through the generations.

The breed was declared extinct early in the 21st century after the most notorious, w.i.l.l.y Voet, published his scandalous Ma.s.sacre a la Chaine in 1999 (Breaking the Chain, Yellow Jersey, 2000), detailing the various nefarious practices these dastards got up to in order to enhance the performance of professional cyclists, some of whom had no idea what was going on. The term "carers" is now used.

The first was "Choppy" Warburton, the only Briton to figure in their ranks. It almost doesn't matter what Warburton did, his nickname alone means he qualifies, but he was also banned and had a client or two (famously the Briton Arthur Linton) who died. He was immortalized, rifling through his drugs bag, by the artist TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

Early soigneurs had multi-sport backgrounds; FAUSTO COPPI's mentor Biagio Cavanna came through soccer, boxing, and six-day racing and had underworld connections. Cavanna was blind, which helped when it came to cultivating mystique. It was Cavanna who gave Coppi much of his reputation for being unpredictable and fussy: ma.s.saging in the dark, using white not red wine vinegar, having total silence in the hotel. It all added to the reputation of the blind man-his hands worked better when it was quiet-who was not popular with the team management, partly because of Coppi's dependence, partly because of the percentage of Coppi's winnings that he took.

Cavanna is one of the founding fathers of the profession, because of the breadth of his brief: ma.s.seur, talent scout, confessor, moral adviser, trainer, provider of early DRUGS and drinks made of orange juice, fruit pulp, and grain. He was known variously as maestro-which also means teacher-the "Miracle Worker" and the "Muscle Wizard."

Magic Remedies =.

Xooee v ochkax Transliteration of Russian for "p.e.n.i.s in the eyes": this is what an ex-Soviet ma.s.seur at the Italian Carrera team used to say when his charges got on the ma.s.sage table, reflecting their relative positions. It's called cultural exchange.

The blind man's hands The notion that blind men give better ma.s.sage goes back to Fausto Coppi's guru Biagio Cavanna, who used the mystique to great effect. His charges still swore his touch was superior 60 years later. To enhance his mystique, "Biasu" himself made a point of knowing precisely where they had been and what they had been doing, in spite of his being sightless. The Spanish team ONCE, sponsored by a blind charity, had a sightless ma.s.seur on their staff.

Get thee to a brothel The Cavanna special: s.e.x per se is not harmful, but going out in the evening and looking for partners detracts from cyclists' rest periods and exposes them to stuff like colds, at best (something team officials have noted in more modern times). His answer (not theirs): pay for it.

Gus Naessens's porridge Naessens was the miracle worker who looked after TOM SIMPSON. One of his specials was boiling up cattle feed into porridge and putting it into the cyclists' feed bottles. The theory was it would sit in the stomach and prevent the muscles from using energy better directed to the legs. These days, he'd be selling crystals as a mental health aid.

Condom up the b.u.m w.i.l.l.y Voet's proudest moment was when he was initiated into this old Belgian method of getting clean urine into a dope-control bottle: clean urine in the condom, which is concealed up the a.n.u.s, small rubber tube to the p.e.n.i.s, bit of hair on the tube so it is camouflaged (a "refinement" of which our w.i.l.l.y was particularly proud). It's fine as long as the urine provider hasn't been on the gear on the quiet, as happened on one famous occasion.

Tail of newt and eye of frog GINO BARTALI didn't have a legendary healer, but he had plenty of his own wacky peasant ideas: vinegar compresses, tobacco from cigarette b.u.t.ts applied locally, grape juice rubs. He was a firm believer in the power of magnetic fields and aligned his hotel room bed northsouth. Other potions of the time included extracts of bee and toad venom, ether, pure cola, egg yolks in port, and cigarettes.

It's all for me, honest JACQUES ANQUETIL's soigneur Julien Schramm and Voet both came up with the same answer when caught with large amounts of dodgy substances. It was not for the cyclists, they said, but for their "own consumption." Schramm changed his mind when asked to inject himself with the amphetamines he was carrying, while Voet realised he was going to carry the can on his own and squealed to the police.

Not positive but pregnant No one knows whether this really happened: it's the old tale in which the rider swaps urine with that of his wife with unforeseen results. But urine subst.i.tution is an old one, with soigneurs p.i.s.sing in pots while the dope-testers backs are turned, tubes hidden in funny places, and even catheters being used to flush out the bladder with clean wee. Ouch.

The TOUR DE FRANCE doctor Pierre Dumas described the soigneurs as witchdoctors, whose "value was in their valise"-in other words, in the remedies they carried. Sometimes their maxims were simply perverse, such as the long-standing belief that cyclists shouldn't drink much in hot weather and that they should eat salt fish when training to harden them up. They would buy patent medicines, scratch the labels off, and sell them at 100 times the price.

Their clients were often credulous characters who would pay through the nose for magic potions such as Cavanna's la bomba-a mix of cola and mild amphetamine-and the go-faster mixes known in France as la topette. The effect was in large part psychological, because placebos worked as well: Voet describes one rival soigneur who had a "time trial special," which one rider in his charge simply had to have; Voet switched it for glucose solution, and the cyclist still flew.

There were straight soigneurs, but Voet's book changed the way all were seen. He described the little deals, the drug-carrying, the elaborate ruses handed down through generations to get around urine tests, the devotion to duty that was not reciprocated by their charges. When Voet was arrested, his main charge, Richard Virenque, was more worried about how he would get his drugs.

The rise of the sports doctor and the entry of women into the profession in the late 1980s was what sounded the death knell for the old-fashioned soigneurs, rather than the name change. Women soigneurs such as LANCE ARMSTRONG's Irish leg rubber Emma O'Reilly didn't do the mystique thing, although they might wrap the day's race food in Penthouse pages to cheer up their charges, as O'Reilly's consoeur Sh.e.l.ley Verses once did; sports drinks took over from magic remedies.

SPAIN A relative latecomer to international cycling, partly down to poverty, partly also due to the political turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s. The national Tour in the cycling heartland of the Basque Country didn't begin until 1924, and the VUELTA A ESPAnA itself didn't get properly established until the 1950s. Early stars included the "Torrelavega Flea," Vicente Trueba, who weighed a mere 112 pounds and had a disabled left hand, while Julian Berrendero was King of the Mountains in the 1935 TOUR DE FRANCE, and double Vuelta winner in spite of having spent several stints in concentration camps during the Civil War.

Spanish Cycle Racing at a Glance =.

Biggest race: Vuelta Legendary racing hills: Angliru, Lagos de Covadonga Biggest star: Miguel Indurain First Tour stage win: Francisco Ezquera, 1936 Tour overall wins to 2010: 11 (Indurain 5, Alberto Contador 3, Pedro Delgado, Luis Ocana, Federico Bahamontes 1 each) Spain has given cycling: Basque fervor; Indurain's torpor; countless diminutive climbers; one of the longest-running pro TEAMS in Reynolds-Banesto-Caisse d'Epargne; Operacion Puerto It was not until the emergence in the postwar years of Miguel Poblet-the first Spaniard to win MilanSan Remo-Bernardo Ruiz (third in the 1952 Tour) and above all of FEDERICO BAHAMONTES that Spanish cycling truly emerged. The "Eagle of Toledo" was a child of the civil war who recalled riding his bike and racing purely in order to get food in the hungry 1940s.

Bahamontes was the first Spanish Tour de France winner and was followed by two equally mercurial climbers, the "Watchmaker of Avila" Julio Jimenez, and EDDY MERCKX's great rivals Jose-Manuel Fuente and Luis Ocana. The latter came close to defeating the "Cannibal" in the 1972 Tour but crashed out of the race on a rain-hit descent in the Pyrenees. He returned the next year to take the Tour in Merckx's absence.

Pedro Delgado was the next star; his victories in the 1985 Vuelta and 1988 Tour de France led to an expansion in teams and races-in 1988 the Federation had to put a cap on the number of teams to calm things down-while the period 199196 saw an economic boom in cycling. That was partly due to an unprecedented period of dominance in the Tour for MIGUEL INDURAIN but the ONCE team led by the Swiss Alex Zulle and France's Laurent Jalabert were also a force to be reckoned with, as were Clas, for whom the Swiss Tony Rominger took the Vuelta in 1992, 1993, and 1994.

Spain began to cool down after the Vuelta's move to a September date in 1995 and Indurain's retirement at the start of 1997. Now, the sport in Spain is an object lesson in the ravages DOPING can cause. There have been numerous high-profile positives, and a ma.s.sive blood-doping scandal, revealed in the Operacion Puerto inquiry, made matters worse. Sponsors have fled, and there is now only one Spanish-backed team in the ProTour, the Basque squad Euskaltel.

The Basque Country remains the heartland. Its fans have put up much of the money by subscription to finance the Euskaltel team-which is Basque backed and only hires Basque cyclists. The Atlantic coast is the home of the San Sebastian CLa.s.sIC and the weeklong Vuelta a Pais Vasco, which dwarfs the Vuelta in terms of popular support. Boasting Orbea and BH bike makers and Exte-Ondo clothing, it is also a center of the bike industry.

SPONSORS.

Your check's in the mail: a litany of bizarre backers of cycling.

* Saville Stainless: a Sheffield firm who made toilets. Don't make jokes to their ex-leader Mark Walsham about pulling the chain.

* Chris Barber: honky tonk tonk, wah wah wah. The jazz group headed by the iconic trumpet player backed a British team briefly back in the 1960s.

* Banana: sounded weirder than it was. A consortium of fruit importers that backed a very winning team headed by, inter alia, current GB coach Shane Sutton.

* Brooklyn: chewing gum. That was strange. As was the incident when the firm owner's daughter got kidnapped in New York and the team ran out of money.

* Sauna Diana: a bar close to the BelgianDutch border where you could go and discuss "business" with the lady of your choice. Possibly the least politically correct team bus decoration ever.

* Astana: a consortium of Kazakh businesses including steel and railways with a casual att.i.tude to paying wages. Led by LANCE ARMSTRONG in 2009 but still known informally as Team Borat.

* Zero Boys: a group of unemployed pros in the late 1980s who sold their jerseys on a freelance race-by-race basis. It didn't catch on.

* Silence: anti-snoring remedy that sponsored a leading Belgium team during the late noughts, including Cadel Evans (see AUSTRALIA) in its line-up. The team was also backed by a pregnancy test, Predictor.

* Linda McCartney: a company producing vegetarian food under the name of the ex-Beatle's late wife was a curious one. Curiouser still was when the manager put together a team with money that wasn't there from three major companies and it went bust after three weeks.

* Lotteries: what is it about national lotteries and two wheels? They have backed cycling in Belgium (Lotto), Spain (ONCE), and France (Francaise des Jeux/FDJ. com). It can't be coincidence, just pure chance no doubt.

STAGE RACES As well as the Big Three of GIRO D'ITALIA, TOUR DE FRANCE, and VUELTA A ESPAnA, there are a host of other smaller multi-day events run on similar lines. The longest-standing ones include : * Tour of Switzerland: run in June, longest after the big three, and famously well-endowed with prize money.

* Dauphine Libere: also in June and a key Tour warm-up event that takes in the climbs that will figure in the July race.