As a former Six-Day racer who rode with Gary Wiggins in the 1970s, Maurice Burton felt that he couldn’t miss the opportunity of seeing Gary’s son, Sir Bradley Wiggins, take part in his last race at Ghent this weekend.
The former national champion and owner of De Ver Cycles in Streatham in South London, said, “I saw an online article about Bradley riding his last Six-Day. He said I’ve trained really hard for this. And it made me think, although I really need to be in the shop selling bikes and trying my best at this time of year, I thought, you know, I better go to Ghent. Because there’s a lot of history behind all of this, and I was there when Bradley won the tour on the Champs Elysées, and I thought I needed to be there.”
Read MoreThis weekend sees the elite men and women battle it out for the World Championship road titles in Doha, Qatar. While the Tour de France remains the most famous bike race in the world, the World Championship can be a more intriguing affair as it’s often unpredictable. For a start it’s a one day race, rather like the Olympic road race, and the riders will be competing in their national teams, meaning that there can be untried and untested combinations of team members. It remains the most important one-day race in the calendar, above the one day Classics and Monuments.
The course changes each year and has favoured climbers, sprinters and all rounders equally over the years, depending on where it’s been held. If you hang around long enough, a course that suits your abilities will eventually come round to give you the opportunity to win the coveted Rainbow Jersey.
Read MoreTomorrow sees the Tour of Britain set off from Glasgow to Port Douglas on the first of eight stages that cross Scotland, the Lake District, Cheshire, Wales, South West England and a finale on the streets of the Capital on 11th September. No less than eight medalists from Rio’s Olympics are taking part, 21 teams, 11 of which are UCI outfits: this is now a highly rated, prestigious and important race in its own right that attracts some of the best cyclists in the world.
It’s come a long way from its humble origins when, in 1945, a group of disgruntled cyclists who’d been banned by the National Cyclists Union set up the Victory Cycling Marathon to celebrate the end of the war. A stage race from Brighton to Glasgow, it was, by all accounts, a disorganised shambles with riders sleeping in barns and sheds in between stages. That first race was very much a French affair: 6 of the top ten finishers were Frenchmen as was its winner, Robert Batot. But it was also hugely popular with as many as 20,000 spectators watching the race set off.
Read MoreToday sees the end of an exciting week of racing at the Tour de France - especially for fans of Mark Cavendish. Cav took three stage wins which makes him the second most successful Tour stage winner of all time, after the legendary Eddy Merckx. Many who had written Cav off as being 'finished' had to eat their words as he used skills learnt on the track to lunge ahead of André Greipel, beating him by millimetres! Ride Velo thought we'd take this opportunity to celebrate the sprint finish by revealing the science, tactics and psychology that goes into achieving the top podium position.
Read MoreAs you’d expect from Sir Paul Smith, one of the great British designers of our age, his Cycling Scrapbook is a beautifully produced volume. The sort of book you savour as you turn each page. A book you’ll treasure and look after and show off to your friends. It’s an eclectic collection of photographs, magazine and newspaper clippings, adverts, cycling jerseys, stunning oil paintings, bicycles and profiles of famous bike riders.
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