Cyclopedia. Part 8

Gustave Garrigou (France, b. 1884, d. 1963) Finished in top five of the Tour de France eight times between 1907 and 1914, winning the 1911 race and taking a total of eight stages. One of the most consistent riders ever, finishing in the first 10 of 96 of the 117 Tour stages he rode. Later Garrigou described the roads in the mountains of the time as "just donkey tracks and I'm being polite" and recalled how he was paid five sovereigns for getting up the Tourmalet without walking.

Octave Lapize (France, b. 1887, d. 1917) Faber's big rival in the 1910 Tour, which was the first to go through the Pyrenees or the Alps. Lapize won that year's race, but entered Tour legend after muttering the words "a.s.sa.s.sins" at the Tour organizers as he climbed the Col de l'Aubisque, fourth col of the first Pyrenean stage. Lapize was an all-rounder who won Paris...o...b..ix three times; but the 1910 Tour was the only one he completed. He quit five times, complaining that the other riders ganged up on him. He became a fighter pilot in the First World War and died after being shot down in a dogfight.

Lucien Pet.i.t-Breton (France, b. 1882, d. 1917) Christened Lucien Mazan but raced under an a.s.sumed name. Pet.i.t-Breton protested angrily when promoters referrred to him as l'Argentin after his country of birth. First man to win MilanSan Remo, and set an early HOUR RECORD, but is best known for winning the 1907 and 1908 Tours, the latter with five stage wins along the way. His first Tour, 1905, was truly bizarre: the race was sabotaged when nails were scattered on the route; Pet.i.t-Breton had no tires left so he quit and got the train to Paris, but he was then persuaded to return to the race where he was relegated to last place on the stage-but he still ended up fifth overall. Like other champions of the time, his life was cut short by the First World War.

Philippe Thys (Belgium, b. 1890, d. 1983) The first man to win the Tour three times, and he would surely have won more had the First World War not intervened. He led the 1914 race from start to finish and won in spite of being fined half an hour for failing to show referees a broken wheel to prove that he had changed a wheel because of an accident. In 1919 he was never outside the first five on any Tour stage and was the first of seven Belgians in the overall standings.

Accidents on the open road were frequent, particularly when the riders had to race at night on poorly maintained roads. The following report from L'Auto on the 1909 BordeauxParis, sums up the spirit of the time: the race was "extremely hard: rain, snow and glacial cold. We watched a bitter battle in the middle of the night, and an accident. At La Couronne, five kilometers from Angouleme, Leon Georget hit a stone ... performed a superb somersault, and as at that moment a [cycle] tourist was on his heels, he was brutally thrown several meters through the air. He lay stretched out, unconscious, and was taken to the nearest checkpoint in a piteous state ... a broken collarbone and a deep wound in his head. As it froze fit to crack stone on the Poitiers road, Trousselier escaped. There was a crazy chase from the peloton and 'Trou-Trou' paid the price. The countryside was covered in a white blanket."

With cyclists trailing all over the countryside in most major races, rather than pa.s.sing quickly in one compact bunch, they had more interaction with the public, who might watch a cyclist in the Tour eat a quick meal in a bar, or thaw out a hypothermic compet.i.tor in MilanSan Remo. There were numerous episodes of tacks being spread on the roads, while in the 1911 Tour it was alleged that one of the favorites, Paul Duboc, had been poisoned; so angry were the fans in his home town of Rouen that the race leader Gustave Garrigou had to be escorted through the town in disguise to avoid being lynched.

(SEE ALSO ALFREDO BINDA, MAURICE GARIN, HUBERT OPPERMAN, HENRI PeLISSIER).

HERRERA, Luis (b. Colombia, 1961) The "little gardener" was the most successful of the wave of Colombian cyclists who came to Europe after the TOUR DE FRANCE was declared "open" to amateurs in 1983. He became synonymous with their main sponsor, Cafe de Colombia. He earned his nickname because he spent his youth picking flowers in the fields near his birthplace, Fusagasuga.

In Herrera's first Tour, 1984, he won the prestigious mountaintop finish at l'Alpe d'Huez, riding away from BERNARD HINAULT and LAURENT FIGNON with a smooth, metronomic pedaling style, while in 1985 he won two more stages and took the mountains jersey, after reaching an agreement to help Hinault on the first mountain stage. Two years later he added the Tour of Spain to his palmares.

Together with FEDERICO BAHAMONTES, Herrera is the only climber to be crowned King of the Mountains in all three major Tours. This was in spite of the fact that, like all Colombians, he had trouble adapting to European racing; he could not descend well and had trouble time-trialling and sprinting.

When he stopped racing he set up a cattle-breeding business, which was estimated to have made him $5 million, but his wealth made him a target for kidnappers. He was seized from his home in 2000 and held for 20 hours before being released; the amount paid for his ransom has never been disclosed.

(SEE ALSO COLOMBIA, ALPS).

HIBELL, Ian (b. England, 1934, d. 2008) Enjoyed perhaps the longest and most strenuous sabbatical in cycling history. Given a year's leave of absence from his job in Brixham, Devon, in 1963, Hibell became one of the world's most prolific cycle-tourists until his untimely death 45 years later. He recounted his earlier exploits in his memoirs Into the Remote Places (Sphere, 1984). The image from that book that most perfectly sums up Hibell shows him paddling his bike across the Manurique river in South America, precariously balanced on a native-style canoe handmade of trees.

Hibell estimated he had used over 800 puncture-repair kits while touring the world, and he had ridden over 250,000 miles on conventional British touring cycles with handbuilt steel frames and drop handlebars: a Freddie Grubb carried him for over 100,000 miles, and he also used a pair of bikes made at Argos in Bristol. All were fitted with customized pannier racks, one with a brazed-on sc.r.a.per to stop the frame clogging with mud.

His voyages included: Norway to the Cape of Good Hope; crossing the Sahara desert; Zeebrugge to Vladivostok; and north to south through China, this last when he was in his early 70s. Between 1971 and 1973 he became the first man to travel on land up the entire length of the American continent from Cape Horn to northwest Alaska. That tour involved crossing the Darien Gap, where the Atrato Swamp caused a supposedly impa.s.sable hiatus in the Pan-American highway. The uncharted s.p.a.ce between the last village on either side is about 30 kilometers; for just under a month Hibell and his two companions slashed their way through the jungle, carrying their bikes over a surface of gra.s.s floating on the mud, at a rate of about one kilometer per day. In the process they ran out of food, fell out terminally with each other, and he came close to losing a foot after a misjudged blow with the machete.

Riding across Peru, he took with him a brown-haired girl from Manchester, Laura Nichols-referred to in Into the Remote Places as Jean-with whom he fell in love and had a son. In 1975, his escapades earned him an appearance on Blue Peter, where he cycled alongside presenter Peter Purves around the studio on his touring bike.

A British adventurer in the great tradition, he was caught in landslides, contracted malaria, braved spear-throwing tribesmen in Africa and murderous mobs inflamed by witch doctors, and at one point lay down under a thorn tree in the desert thinking he was going to die of dehydration.

He also had encounters with Eskimo princesses and a Dayak headman in Borneo. After all this, Hibell was mown down by a hit-and-run motorist in Greece while training for a trip to Tibet by riding from England to Athens. A collected volume of his print articles, The Legend of Ian Hibell, has been published posthumously.

HIGH-WHEELER Design of bike from the late 19th century with a large front wheel and small rear, with pedals driving direct to the front wheel. It is also referred to as an "ordinary" or "penny farthing." It was developed from the front-wheel driven BONESHAKER-in which both wheels were the same size-and had a heyday that lasted a quarter of a century, in which cycling became almost universal. It was superseded by the SAFETY BICYCLE.

The high-wheeler had a major advantage: if handled well the huge front wheel could absorb the ruts and potholes of poorly made 19th century roads. But it had its limitations: braking was difficult, gearing was restricted by the inside leg of the rider, and more seriously, it was intimidating to use and dangerous to ride, with headfirst crashes all too frequent and fatalities not uncommon. The rider's position on top of the vast front wheel was inherently unstable-particularly in any kind of a wind-while steering was affected by the action of pedaling. It was recommended that when riding downhill, the safest position was with the legs over the handlebars so that if a "header" occurred, the cyclist could simply vault onto his feet.

Even so, high-wheelers became astonishingly popular. By the mid-1870s there were estimated to be about 50,000 on British roads. Cycling clubs and cycle races sprung up rapidly, which led to a battle between manufacturers to reduce weight. By the 1880s, the Cyclists' Touring Club had over 20,000 members and had approved almost 800 hotels for their use. By 1897 most major towns had cycling schools, teaching the skill in the same way that driving is taught today.

In America, the 1880s saw ma.s.sive expansion in high-wheeler use, with the entrepreneurial Colonel Albert A. Pope as the driving force: Pope bought up all the available cycle patents, set up cycle ma.s.s production for his Columbia machine in Hartford, Connecticut, founded The Wheelman magazine, and set up the League of American Wheelmen to campaign for better roads for bicyclists. At the peak of bike mania, Pope was making a quarter of a million bikes per year. The volume of innovation was such that by the 1890s, the US needed a separate patent office for bicycles, while a single office could cover everything else.

The basic limitations of the high-wheeler led to further invention: to counter the gearing issue, machines such as the Coventry-made "Kangaroo" used chain drive and geared sprockets to enable a smaller front wheel to be used, while numerous more stable variants on the penny farthing design were tried, including the "star," which had the small wheel in front. The "xtraordinary" and the "facile" used lever drives to reduce the size of the front wheel. The "dicycle" had two large wheels in parallel with the rider sitting in between. These were all dubbed "safety" bikes, and eventually the high-wheeler became obsolete. Pope, naturally, was at the forefront, making his first safety bike in 1888.

HILL CLIMBS A ma.s.s-start event up a major mountain pa.s.s, with the riders timed. Cla.s.sic climbs include the Mount Evans hill-climb in Colorado, which takes in the highest paved road in the US, with a summit of 14,264 feet.

It has been held since 1962. The course record for men is 1 hour 41 minutes 20 seconds by Tom Danielson (2004). JEANNIE LONGO holds the women's record with 1 hour 59 minutes 19 seconds. In New England, the Mount Washington Auto Road climb has been going for almost 40 years; the climb is 7.6 miles, the summit 6,288 feet, the steepest gradient 22 percent. The big attraction of the Mount Washington event is that apart from the three days when it is open for hill-climbs, the road is closed to cyclists.

The hill-climb in Great Britain is a time trial up a hill, from top to bottom, usually run at the end of the season as autumn sets in. The first hill-climb was run by the Catford CC in 1887, and their event on Yorks hill near Sevenoaks in Kent remains one of the cla.s.sics, along with its near neighbor run by the Bec CC at t.i.tsey in Surrey. Other cla.s.sic British climbs include Monsal Head in Derbyshire, the Ramsbottom Rake in Lancashire, the Horseshoe Pa.s.s in North Wales, and Snake Pa.s.s in Derbyshire.

HINAULT, Bernard Born: Yffiniac, France, November 14, 1954 Major wins: World road race championship 1980; Tour de France 19789, 19812, 1985, 28 stage wins; Giro d'Italia 1980, 1982, 1985, six stage wins; Vuelta a Espana 1978, 1983, seven stage wins; Paris...o...b..ix 1981; Giro di Lombardia 1984; LiegeBastogneLiege 1977, 1980; GhentWevelgem 1977, Fleche Wallonne 1979, 1983; Amstel Gold Race, 1981; GP des Nations 19779, 1982 Nickname: the Badger Further reading: Memories of the Peloton, trans. Noel Henderson, 1989 During the 1992 TOUR DE FRANCE, you could buy fluffy badger toys with a picture of the five-time Tour winner, nicknamed Le Blaireau (the Badger), on sale for charity. It was a bizarre bit of marketing, as in real life Hinault was anything but cuddly: he remains one of the most combative cycling champions ever, earning his NICKNAME, as he said himself, "because a badger is a devil of an animal to deal with in a tight corner." It was also, he said on another occasion, because when wounded, the badger would retire to its burrow, lick its cuts, then come out fighting.

Celebrated as one of the elite club who have won five Tours de France, Hinault is stocky and outspoken, ready with a smile or a glare, aggressive on his bike and off it, most famously taking on a bunch of striking dockers who stopped the 1984 Paris-Nice race. He was not beyond throwing the odd punch in retirement, notably during the 2008 Tour de France when a demonstrator rushed on to the winner's podium at Nantes and the "Badger" gave no quarter. The clip is now a YouTube cla.s.sic. Hinault said that one of his main reasons for going to school was that there might be a fight on the way there.

As a pro cyclist he was legendary as a boss or patron who would make the bunch race his way or suffer for their impudence. "Sometimes he would attack and the peloton would string out into a long line. Then he would sit up and start laughing, mocking us. He had a G.o.d-like aura, but I didn't like him," recalled the cyclist-turned-journalist Paul Kimmage. ROBERT MILLAR said he was so fearsome that the number 666 should be tattooed on his forehead. In 1984, having lost the Tour to LAURENT FIGNON, he took out a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt in L'Equipe, proclaiming: "I shall be back next year. The badger has claws and intends to use them." True to his word he returned to win a fifth Tour in 1985.

Together with his La Vie Claire teammate GREG LEMOND he produced one of the greatest Tours ever when he finished second in 1986 after three weeks when their RIVALRY turned the event into a hotbed of intrigue and mindgames. His greatest wins came in the face of adversity, be it the crash in the 1985 Tour that left him with two black eyes and a broken nose or the ding-dong battle with Joop Zoetemelk in the 1979 race that ended with the pair sprinting out the finish together on the Champs-Elysees.

His greatest victory, perhaps, was when he dominated LiegeBastogneLiege in a snowstorm that forced most of the field to retire in 1980. He rode with bare legs and ended up with fingers that remained numb for three weeks afterward. He also crushed the field in the 1980 world championship to prove a point after quitting that year's Tour with a knee injury. That was a devastating race: a series of searing attacks on the Domancy hill at Sallanches that left the field in tatters. The Badger's retirement was typical: he had always said he would quit at 32, so he organized a cyclo-cross race in his village in Brittany five days before his birthday, finished 14th in front of a crowd of 15,000, and never raced again. He worked for the Tour de France organizers from 1989 onwards and remains a pungent commentator on cycling, most notably in 2009, when he had a media spat with LANCE ARMSTRONG.

HOBBY HORSE Early bicycle with no pedals, powered by the rider pushing his feet against the ground, also known as the DRAISIENNE. See that entry for more details.

HOLLAND The only European country where a conscious, long-term nationwide effort has been made to promote cycling as transport. It has 19,000 kilometers of bike lanes; nearly 85 percent of the population own at least one bike, and there are estimated to be 16 million bikes in the country. Cycling has been made such an attractive option that in one town, Groningen, 57 percent of all journeys are made by bike and virtually all the children cycle to school, some travelling up to 20 km.

The Dutch did not implement a national cycling policy until 1990, but as early as the 1970s there had been an increasing awareness that unrestrained road building to accommodate ever-growing car traffic was not possible; there wasn't enough s.p.a.ce in this densely populated country. Beginning in 1974 the cycle route network was ma.s.sively expanded, with investment of some $230 million; from 1990 all major cities had to implement plans for increased cycle use. The result is a ma.s.sive network of traffic-free cycle paths, many of them two-way, with junctions at motor-traffic roads specially designed for cycle safety, including underpa.s.ses and bridges and clearly marked areas where cyclists can wait at traffic lights in front of cars. The aim, said one cycling policy paper, was to ensure that "all traffic partic.i.p.ants must have equal rights."

Groningen offers a detailed view of what can be done. Proactive cycling policies began in 1969: over the years, car access to the city center has been restricted, initially in the face of opposition from businesspeople and shopkeepers. Through traffic was removed from the center, and cars directed to parking lots.

AMUSING DUTCH FACTOID.

Cycle racing was banned on Sundays until the 1950s.

4.

By 2000 a huge network of cycle lanes had been built (equivalent to perhaps 60 percent of the major roads); from 1980 secure, supervised cycle storage facilities were provided, roughly one a year. These provide lockers, repair facilities, rent racks, and carriers; there are 15 at various schools. At traffic lights heavy flows of cyclists were given priority. Investment in cycle-specific facilities between 1989 and 2000 was some 23 million euros, with cycle-friendly facilities also forming part of other investment programs.

Policy doc.u.ments available through the Dutch cycling information service make it clear that this has only been achieved by sustained long-term investment over several decades, with every planning decision taking into account how people are going to travel and how they can best be accommodated. Food for thought as cities grapple with congestion and climate change.

HORSES Contests between cyclists and horses were popular in the US in the pioneering days of bike racing. The Lordsburg Liberal from 1888 tells of "an ugly but tough" horse that cost $350 beating a bike over 49 miles through Colorado, while the New York Times published a lengthy report in 1888 of a SIX-DAY RACE in Madison Square Garden between men and horses, using an earth track for the horses outside a boarded bike track. The match pitted long-distance horse rider Charles M. Anderson against two cyclists, Irish champion William Woodside and Pennsylvania champion John Brooks; Anderson had 20 horses and could change at will, while the cyclists rode for an hour each. Racing was from 1 PM to 1 AM, to the sound of a regimental band playing tunes from The Mikado. The winner is not recorded.

Occasionally during the 20th century cyclists raced horses purely as stunts, including Italian CAMPIONISSIMO Costante Girardengo, Rik Van Steenbergen of Belgium, and Italian climber Claudio Chiappucci. There was also speculation about a match between Mario Cipollini and a stallion named Varenne, although it seemed that Cipo's interest in the contest was partly to invite comparison between his s.e.xual exploits and those of the stallion. (See s.e.x.) The longest-standing Man v. Horse contest took place between 1985 and 1994 in the Mid-Wales town of Llanwrtyd Wells, which hosts various bizarre events including the world bog-snorkelling championship. The Man v. Horse marathon was for runners, mountain bikes, and horses over an insanely mountainous 22-mile course that included a forest section, where the cyclists had to crawl through deep mud underneath fir tree branches that came down to a couple of feet above the track. It was sponsored by bookmakers William Hill, who invited bets on whether two legs could beat four. The first biker or runner to best the quadrupeds was mountain-bike legend Tim Gould of Yorkshire, who earned 5,000 in 1989 for beating a horse called the Doid. Gould was helped a little when the organizers ruled that vets' checks on the horses had to be included in their times.

Tougher regulations over racing mountain bikes on bridleways mean that the race is now restricted to runners against horses.

HOUR RECORD Another influential innovation from the mind of TOUR DE FRANCE founder HENRI DESGRANGE, cycling's Blue Riband withstood the test of time almost as well as the Tour, but after more than a century it was eventually rendered meaningless by official interference.

Whereas the Tour de France created its mystique by making its partic.i.p.ants into supermen with deeds that defied most people, the Hour is simplicity itself: how far can you go in 60 minutes? And while the Tour men performed away from public gaze, mediated by journalists and television-even if you see the Tour today on the road, it's only a fleeting glimpse-the Hour has always been a public display of just what a man can physically achieve. Circling a velodrome for 60 minutes against a schedule, any show of weakness is instantly visible: if an Hour contender has to give up, that means public humiliation.

The first man to attempt the feat was JAMES MOORE, winner of the first bike races in the late 1860s. He covered 23 km on an old ordinary in Wolverhampton in 1873, but there was no world governing body to recognize the feat. Desgrange, riding on the Buffalo track in Paris 20 years later, set the first officially sanctioned distance, then retired to work as a journalist. What he left cycling was an absolute measure of what men could achieve on two wheels with the means available to them at a certain time.

The first great Hour duel lasted seven years. Just before the First World War the Swiss Oscar Egg and the Frenchman Marcel Berthet between them put 2.7 km on the distance. Egg eventually took the record over 44 km, a distance that stood for 19 years. When it was eventually beaten, the Swiss demanded that the track in Holland used by Jan Van Hout be remeasured. Initially it was ruled that Van Hout's record was short, then it was decided that the measurement had been done too low down the track, and the record stood.

The distance set by FAUSTO COPPI in 1942 is legendary less for the distance than for another spat over measuring, with the previous holder Maurice Archambaud, and the fact that Coppi was racing in extreme conditions, with Milan under British bombardment. The attempt was timed for the early afternoon, as the bombers tended not to attack during factory lunchbreaks.

After Coppi, the Hour became obligatory for any great: JACQUES ANQUETIL succeeded in breaking the record twice, but his second attempt was not recognized, as he refused to undergo drug testing. EDDY MERCKX set what was viewed as a definitive distance in Mexico City in 1972. He virtually had to be lifted off his bike afterward, and swore he would never attempt the record again because he had suffered so much for his 49.431 km.

Merckx had used what was then cutting-edge technology, reflecting the idea that what mattered was making the bike as light as possible. His handlebars had 48 drill holes, 95 g were saved by drilling every slot in the chain, and his bike maker Ernesto Colnago made specially light tubular tires (70 g) and used t.i.tanium for spokes, stem, and bars. Merckx also attempted to replicate the high alt.i.tude of Mexico by training in a mask so that he breathed in air with reduced oxygen content as he trained.

Athlete's Hour Record: However, his approach was positively primitive compared with FRANCESCO MOSER 12 years later. The Italian and his 50-strong backup team paid meticulous attention to AERODYNAMICS and diet, and the outcome was that Merckx's record was smashed not once, but twice in a few days. That feat led to aerodynamic aids such as low-profile bikes, disc wheels, and teardrop-shaped helmets becoming widely accepted.

The final, and perhaps finest, flurry of activity came between 1993 and 1996 when GRAEME OBREE and CHRIS BOARDMAN pushed the boundaries of aerodynamics and technology still further. Obree's radical tuck position proved that new thinking was possible in cycling, while Boardman-and his coach Peter Keen-took the scientific approach that was a foretaste of the British Olympic team's philosophy a few years later. That it took two of the best road racers of the 1990s, MIGUEL INDURAIN and his understudy Tony Rominger, to wrest the record from the two Britons spoke volumes about their achievements.

The Hour that stands above all the rest was also the record's last 60 minutes: Boardman's 56.375 km, set in Manchester after the 1996 Olympics using Obree's stretched out "Superman" position. Here was a man in perfect form on a machine at the limit of what was permitted at the time. "I did one minute flat for the last kilometer which is about a second off the world record," recalled Boardman. "That is how good I felt."

But the Hour's time was up. Cycling's governing body, the UCI, had been concerned by Obree's innovations and by Boardman's use of the radical Lotus bike (see MIKE BURROWS for more on that machine) and felt that technology was beginning to detract from the human side of cycling: the bikes were becoming more important than the men on them.

Their answer was to have two records. Any technology was acceptable in setting the Best Hour Performance, while gear similar to that used by Merckx was obligatory for the Athlete's Hour. Boardman's final feat before retirement was to break, narrowly, Merckx's distance, but the next beating of the hour, by the Russian Ondrej Sosenka, barely made headlines. Meanwhile, the legal niceties of what equipment could and could not be used-there was debate over pulse monitors and cycle computers, for example-made future hour attempts akin to tiptoeing through a bureaucratic minefield.

Further reading/viewing: The Hour: Sporting Immortality the Hard Way, Michael Hutchinson, Yellow Jersey, 2006; DVD: The Final Hour HOY, Sir Chris Born: Edinburgh, Scotland, March 23, 1976 Major wins: Olympic gold sprint, team sprint, kilometer 2008; Olympic gold kilometer 2004; Olympic silver team sprint 2000; world champion sprint 2008, Keirin 20078; kilometer 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, team sprint 2002, 2005; Commonwealth champion, kilometer, 2002, team sprint 2006; MBE 2004; knighted 2008 Nickname: the Real McHoy Further reading: Heroes, Villains and Velodromes, Richard Moore, Harpersport, 2008; Chris Hoy, the Autobiography, Chris Hoy, Harper Collins UK, 2010 The greatest cycling Olympian GREAT BRITAIN has produced, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the Beijing Games in 2008, and the first cyclist to be elected BBC Sports Personality of the Year since TOM SIMPSON in 1965. Hoy began his cycling life as a juvenile BMX star and moved to mountain-biking and road racing before becoming a track racer at the Meadowbank velodrome in Edinburgh, taking a silver medal in the British junior sprint championship in 1994. Hoy's career was transformed when national lottery funding arrived in British cycling in 1997; he was one of the early beneficiaries of the World Cla.s.s Performance Plan put together by CHRIS BOARDMAN's trainer Peter Keen.

Together with Jason Queally and Craig Maclean, he made the initial breakthrough with a silver medal in the team sprint at the 1999 world championship in Berlin. The Sydney Olympic Games a year later saw Queally take kilometer gold while Hoy, Queally, and Maclean raced to silver in the team sprint. Hoy's breakthrough year was 2002, with gold medals in the kilometer and team sprint at the world championship. In 2004 he took the kilometer gold at the Athens Games, only for the UCI to drop the event from the Olympic program. Even so, Hoy then added a further six world t.i.tles in the next three years, including the world sprint championship in Manchester in 2008. No Briton had won the t.i.tle since REG HARRIS in 1954.

In 2007 Hoy traveled to the Bolivian capital, La Paz, to attack the Frenchman Arnaud Tournant's standing start kilometer record. The Scot was warned before he rode that there was a risk he might collapse afterward with pulmonary edema, a buildup of fluid on the lungs. Oxygen canisters and an oxygen-filled body-bag were on standby. The velodrome there is poorly maintained: the surface is b.u.mpy and before Hoy made his bid, the waist-high gra.s.s in the track center had to be cut with scythes.

Hoy's attempt cost tens of thousands of pounds-he made no money out of it for himself, the sponsorship cash all went into logistics-took a year's planning, and ended in relative failure when he failed, twice, to beat Tournant's time, falling short by just 0.005 seconds on his second attempt. Smashing the 500 m record was meager compensation, but recordbreaking is an unforgiving business.

Beijing was the climax of his career, however. The gold rush began on day one with a blistering team sprint together with Jamie Staff and the virtually unknown Jason Kenny. The trio recorded 42.95 seconds in qualifying, the fastest time ever recorded for the three-man, three-lap effort, which broke the spirit of their main rivals, the French and Australians. The final was a formality; as was Hoy's t.i.tle in the KEIRIN the following day. From the previous year's world championship in Palma, Mallorca, he had developed his own style, attacking early and relying on his strength to keep him ahead of the opposition. The silver medal went to another Scot, Ross Edgar, on a day when Great Britain landed seven medals.

The third event was the most prestigious of the series, the match sprint, and in the final Hoy was pitted against Kenny, who was no match for the older man. On taking gold number three the Scot collapsed into the arms of his father, David, and dissolved into tears prompting the headline: "The Great Bawl of China." "We try to act like robots, to keep our emotions capped throughout the whole process. That's why it all came out afterwards," Hoy later explained.

Hoy is outwardly mild-mannered and genial, but inside he is a driven man. "Bottom line, he's selfish," said performance manager Shane Sutton. "He's a gentle giant with the big Mike Tyson neck. He's a trainoholic: he loves getting up, going to work and leaving everything on the track." Hoy worked with the team psychiatrist Steve Peters in the buildup to the Athens Olympics to overcome his nerves-the kilometer is a waiting game, when you have to watch the opposition performing which can be intimidating. "There's a myth that sports people are very self-confident but I'd say a high percentage are wracked with self-doubt. Ten minutes before the start you'd rather be anywhere else." Hoy wrote his MEMOIRS in 2009 and as the London Games hove into view, he was hinting that his best days might be yet to come.

(SEE ALSO TRACK RACING, OLYMPIC GAMES).

HUMAN POWERED VEHICLES The International Human Powered Vehicle a.s.socation was founded in California in 1975. HPVs are in essence any cycle with aerodynamic parts that fall outside UCI rules. These can include conventional diamond-frame bikes with fairings to enhance AERODYNAMICS, or REc.u.mBENT machines that offer a lower profile. The HPV HOUR RECORD is 87.123 km, set in 2008; compared with the conventional bike record of 49.7 km, the speed advantage speaks for itself.

I.

INDOOR CYCLING Umbrella term for two disciplines in which the UCI recognizes world championships: cycle ball and artistic cycling. The first is similar to soccer, with the cycle wheels used to kick the ball; the second is a form of bicycle gymnastics using specially made low-gear cycles.

INDURAIN, Miguel Born: Villava, Spain, July 16, 1964 Major wins: Olympic time trial champion 1996; world time trial champion 1995; Tour de France 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 12 stage wins; Giro d'Italia 1992, 1993, four stage wins; San Sebastian Cla.s.sic 1990; world hour record 1994 Nicknames: Big Mig Interests outside cycling: tractor repair, reading, sleeping While other TOUR DE FRANCE greats such as LANCE ARMSTRONG and BERNARD HINAULT wore their hearts on their sleeves and FAUSTO COPPI and JACQUES ANQUETIL made headlines with scandal in their private lives, "Big Mig" was famously impenetrable, verging on the boring. However, he was not without his wry side, as the American journalist Dan Coyle depicted in the book Tour de Force. Indurain is shown a $250,000 time trial bike developed in secret by a team of technicians; asked what he thinks of it, he replies, "Very good, but don't forget about the legs."

The suspicion lingered that anyone who delved behind a facade consisting of a shy grin, understated humor, and ba.n.a.l statements of the obvious would find there was not a great deal hidden underneath, other than the fact that Miguel was a dab hand at tractor maintenance and was sadly missed on his family's farm when he was away racing. One Spanish sports journalist complained that "Twenty years from now, the woman of his life will not know who she has spent her life with."

Indurain's cycling career began with the tractor: one day as a child he rode to the fields to play on the machine and had his bike stolen by a pair of tramps. To console him, he was given his first racing bike, becoming a fine sprinter as a teenager. Slimmed down from his amateur days but still weighing in at 182 pounds, Indurain could have won the 1990 Tour had he not been told to a.s.sist his team leader Pedro Delgado at a critical moment. As it was, he dominated the Tour de France from 1991 to 1995, taking a "double of doubles" in 1992 and 1993 in the Giro and Tour and becoming, briefly, Spain's most popular sportsman, named the country's athlete of the 20th century: the victory that defined his career was in the Luxembourg time trial in the 1992 Tour that GREG LEMOND described as "from another planet." For the next three years, he was totally dominant in the event.

In 1994, for all his ma.s.sive shoulders, he was seen riding over the Mont Ventoux in the Tour at 21 mph with his team managers pleading with him to slow down for his own good; that year he put in the definitive mountain performance of his career, burning off all the climbers such as MARCO PANTANI at Hautacam in the Pyrenees. He also broke the HOUR RECORD at the end of that year. A pragmatic, gentle giant, he dominated the Tour because his fellow cyclists liked him as well as fearing the power in his legs. "I pray to Saint Michael every time I want to stop for a pee," said ROBERT MILLAR, implying that if Indurain decided to attack he might be in serious trouble.

Indurain faced one major crisis in his five victorious Tours, when the ONCE team put him under ma.s.sive pressure in a 1995 Tour stage through the Ma.s.sif Central to the town of Mende; Big Mig's Banesto team cracked but he had given out so many favors in the previous four Tours that virtually every team in the race was willing to help in the chase.

Indurain was said to have lost his temper while racing only four or five times, once en route to defeat in the 1996 Tour. His implacable good nature meant he remained immune to stress as the Tour grew in size through the 1990s: his almost exclusive focus on the race-he used the Giro essentially as preparation-contributed to the Tour's transformation into the dominant event in the cycling calendar. He retired in January 1997, embittered at his team after they pushed him to start the 1996 Tour of Spain against his will, and now lives near the family home in Villava, a suburb of the northern Spanish city of Pamplona. His brother Prudencio also raced briefly as a pro.

(SEE ALSO SPAIN).

IRELAND A "small" cycling nation that has consistently punched above its weight and has produced a fine array of international stars in spite of over half a century of political conflict between various governing bodies. More significantly, perhaps, Ireland was where the pneumatic tire was patented by John Boyd Dunlop and the first bike using those tires was advertised by one Will Edlin, of Dunlop's home city, Belfast.

Ireland had an early star in Harry Reynolds, world amateur sprint champion in 1896. Then it lay fallow as cycling became bound up in the conflict over national ident.i.ty. Even so, TIME TRIALLING, British style, went on, but with one important difference: the Irish could wear shorts rather than black alpaca tights. That meant they could go faster, and the outcome was that the key time-trialling barrier for the English, 25 miles inside an hour, was actually first broken in Ireland in 1934, when Alo Donegan rode 59 minutes 5 seconds; four years later, the Englishman George Fleming visited Ireland to push the record down to 57 minutes 56 seconds.

Reflecting the politics of the island, Irish cycling was split between those who wanted it united, north and south, and those who didn't. The dispute led to violent scenes such as those in 1956 at the RaS-an eight-day stage race which remains the linchpin of the calendar-when an Irish tricolor was carried over the border to Northern Ireland on the race lead car. The Irish flag was banned in the North, so when police tried to remove the flag, there was a fracas and the stage was abandoned. As the riders cycled to the finish, Republican songs were sung and one rider tried to remove a Union Jack from a telegraph pole. In Cookstown there was a riot involving a unionist crowd and police, and one rider was badly beaten.

There were also incidents at the 1955 world championship and the 1972 Olympic Games, where there were fights between rival Irish teams.

Amid all this, Ireland's pioneer emerged: in 1954 Shay Elliott, a quiet lad from Dublin, won a mountain stage in the Route de France amateur race; the following season he raced for ACBB in Paris (see FOREIGN LEGION for other stars to come through this club) and in 1956 he turned professional, at a time when racers from outside the European heartland were truly the exception.

Irish Cycle Racing at a Glance =.

Biggest race: The Ras Legendary racing hill: St Patrick's Hill, Cork Biggest star: Sean Kelly First Tour stage win: Shay Elliott, Roubaix, 1961 Tour overall wins to 2010: Stephen Roche, 1987 Further reading/viewing: Sean Kelly: A Man For All Seasons, David Walsh, Grafton, 1986; Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel with a Pro Cyclist, Paul Kimmage, Random House UK, 2007; The Foreign Legion, Rupert Guinness, Springfield, 1993; The Ras: the Story of Ireland's Unique Stage Race, Tom Daly, Collins Press, 2003; DVD: Cycle of Betrayal (Shay Elliott's story) Elliott took groundbreaking wins in the Het Volk CLa.s.sIC and stages in the Giro, Tour, and VUELTA A ESPAnA, as well as becoming the first Irishman to lead the Tour and the Vuelta. He also took a silver medal in the 1962 world road race championship, but by the late 1960s his career was on the slide. His marriage failed, as did a hotel he owned; he returned to Ireland but never truly put his life back on the rails and in 1971 he committed suicide. He is remembered with a MEMORIAL on the pa.s.s of Glenmalure in the Wicklow Hills, and a road race is organized annually in his honor.

The political rumblings continued, and it took six years for Elliott's successor to emerge: the arrival of SEAN KELLY in pro cycling began a golden era for Irish cycling, with STEPHEN ROCHE joining him in taking the sport to new heights in the 1980s, when between them the pair won all three major Tours, the world championships, and a welter of stage races and Cla.s.sics, with Kelly ranked world number one for six years. That decade also saw the foundation of the around-Ireland Nissan Cla.s.sic stage race and produced other professionals: Martin Earley, who enjoyed a solid career as a domestique, Roche's brother Laurence, and Paul Kimmage, who went on to a controversial career as an award-winning journalist.

After Kelly and Roche retired, the Nissan ended and Irish cycling reverted to what it had been: based around the Ras, with occasional star performances at international level. The 1998 world junior champion Mark Scanlon never quite made it, but the foundation of an Irish cycling academy in 2005, and a second division pro team-both with Kelly's support-provided an injection of energy.

Most promisingly of all, in 2006-7 the sport was unified for the first time thanks to the process of political reconciliation in the North. A professional Tour of Ireland emerged again, with LANCE ARMSTRONG among the 2009 field, and that year saw three promising young riders on the pro circuit: Roche's son Nicolas-who came close to winning a stage in the Tour-his nephew Daniel Martin, and Philip Deignan, who won a stage in the 2009 Vuelta.

Ireland has given cycling the pneumatic tire, PHIL LIGGETT'S most memorable quote ("It's Roche, it's Stephen Roche"), and too many convivial evenings to count on the Nissan Cla.s.sic and Ras.

ITALY Cycle racing began early in Italy, with the first event recorded in Padua in 1869. FirenzePistoia, the oldest cycle race still run, began in 1870, MilanTurin in 1876. The GIRO D'ITALIA was founded in 1909 but there was none of the conflict with the bike manufacturers that resulted in tension at the TOUR DE FRANCE. Instead, the organizers welcomed the bike makers' teams, who in turn liked an easier course that would result in more predictable racing, one result being ALFREDO BINDA's outrageous dominance. The ALPS and DOLOMITES did not figure until the 1930s-whereas in France HENRI DESGRANGE sought to make his Tour as tough as possible.

Italian cycling developed its own way of thinking, focused heavily on the campione or CAMPIONISSIMO, with teams constructed around helping the star. For example, just four riders-Binda, Costante Girardengo, Gaetano Belloni, and Giovanni Brunero-won virtually every major race in the 1920s, and that set a pattern that lasted until the 21st century, when campioni regularly fell foul of antidoping rules. The small number of stars set the stage for the RIVALRIES that marked Italian cycling-some real, many blown up by the press-while making cycling easy to read for the public.

Desgrange's decision to move to national teams prompted more of the campioni to appear in the Tour, with GINO BARTALI taking a dominant win in the 1938 edition with the backing of Mussolini's fascist regime, which pulled strings to make sure he did not waste his strength racing that year's Giro.

Italian Cycle Racing at a Glance =.

Biggest race: MilanSan Remo Legendary racing hill: Stelvio or Poggio Biggest star: Fausto. Or is it Gino?

First Tour stage win: Vincenzo Borgarello, Perpignan, 1912 Tour overall wins to 2009: 9 Italy has given cycling: Campagnolo, Coppi, the campione concept, team racing, rivalries, the tifosi, polemica, but one thing above all else: pa.s.sion Great Italian Cycling Manufacturers: Where They Live and the Bits They Make =.

Campagnolo: Vicenza. See separate section on the iconic component maker.

Pinarello: Treviso. Founded 1952, Italy's most successful frame maker of recent years, winning Tour de France nine times since 1988, notably with MIGUEL INDURAIN from 19915. Sponsors British Team Sky in 2010. Iconic machines: Montello SLX used by Alexi Grewal to win 1984 Olympic road race, made with Columbus steel tubing rifled inside for strength; initials GPT (Giovanni Pinarello, Treviso) stamped in various places. Paris, aluminium frame with carbon front and rear forks used by Jan Ullrich to win 1997 Tour.

Cinelli: Milan. Component maker established in 1948 by Cino Cinelli, a pro who won the 1943 MilanSan Remo, and pa.s.sed to the Columbus owners in 1978; emblem is a winged C. Cino set out making bars and stems with his brother Giotto, but the company produced a limited number of frames in the 1970s, including an aerodynamic machine for Ole Ritter's HOUR RECORD attempt of 1974, and still makes bikes in the green-white-red of the Italian flag. Iconic products: Cork bicycle ribbon (1987); Spinaci handlebar extensions (1996).

Colnago: Cambiago, near Milan. Established in 1954 by Ernesto Colnago, with its emblem a clover leaf. Colnago made the super-light bike used by EDDY MERCKX to break the HOUR RECORD in 1972 and Giuseppe Saronni's world-t.i.tle-winning bike in 1982, and was a partner to the Mapei team in the 1990s. Made the first front fork with straight blades, the Precisa in 1982. Now sources some of its bikes in Taiwan. Iconic designs: Master, C-40.

De Rosa: Cusano Milanino, near Milan. Founded mid-1950s by Ugo de Rosa; a small concern that began making bikes for Eddy Merckx in the late 1960s and later became official supplier to his Molteni team. Later, De Rosa advised Merckx when he started his own bike factory. Other stars to ride De Rosa include Francesco Moser, Moreno Argentin. Iconic design: t.i.tanio, ridden by Gewiss in 1994.

Bianchi: Treviglio, east of Milan. The oldest surviving bike-making company in the world, founded 1885 by Edoardo Bianchi, now owned by Cycle Europe conglomerate. Logo is a crowned eagle. Its reputation is forged by links with Fausto Coppi, Felice Gimondi, and Marco Pantani. Still makes some 15,000 high-end bikes annually, 6070 percent painted in the light blue a.s.sociated with Coppi. Iconic products: 1953 world championship winning machine ridden by Coppi, celeste blue on chrome, early Campagnolo Gran Sport 10-speed gears; handlebar mounted bottle cage with a spring to hold the bottle in.

Columbus: Milan. Founded early in 20th century as general producer of metal tubing, whose products also include tubular furniture, boiler tubes, ski sticks, and car cha.s.sis under the name Gilco (used by Ferrari and Maserati); made its first cycle tubing in 1931; now also makes aluminium and carbon tubes. Iconic products: SLX, internally rifled tubing made in the 1980s; Max framesets, the first with variable sizing for increased strength, from 1987.