Former pro cyclist and National Champion, Maurice Burton, was assaulted while out riding his bike yesterday. A bank holiday Monday ride through picturesque Kent villages ended up with the De Ver Cycles owner in hospital after a motorist pulled 60-year old Burton off his bike in an unprovoked attack.
The pretty village of Downe, home to Charles Darwin, is on a popular route for club rides and tensions often arise between motorists and road cyclists but the police rarely have to intervene.
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Many successful sportsmen have struggled with their personal lives at the end of their sporting careers. Who can forget the images of a washed out Paul Gascoigne, overweight and dependent on alcohol, struggling with his demons as he tried to make some sense of his life after a glittering, but not entirely fulfilled, career as a footballer? Of course the cycling world is no different: Marco Pantani suffered a terrible decline into drug addiction that tragically destroyed him. Even the apparently unshakeable Eddy Merckx floundered after retirement for a while, as he sought out a life in business as a prefabricated building salesman before being persuaded to go into the bike building business!
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What is it that makes a champion? What transcends someone from being simply a strong rider to one that has the killer instinct that means it’s their wheel, not their rival’s, that crosses the line of the track first?
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