Cyclopedia (11 page)

The Koppenberg
in the Tour of Flanders, a climb that is only 400 m long but has a gradient of 25 percent. It's not always in the route, being so narrow that crashes are a certainty; the most famous happened in 1987 when the Dane Jesper Skibby was inches from being run over by the race organizer as he lay on the cobbles strapped in to his bike. A series of photos by GRAHAM WATSON captured the moment.

The Kemmelberg
in Ghent–Wevelgem is as steep as the Koppenberg, but wider and longer, so less conducive to crashes as the riders climb up. It was a focal point for fighting
in the First World War, and has a vast ossuary on the top. There is also a fine restaurant in the final meters, where fans gather to munch steak and fries and applaud the riders. What is truly fearsome is the descent: vertiginously steep, over massive paving stones, and virtually unridable in the wet.

Another major race that includes cobbles is the Four Days of Dunkirk, which has a stage over the fearsome Mont Cassel, while the Scheldeprijs at Antwerp has seven cobbled sections. But cobbles are not restricted to French and Belgian Flanders. In Great Britain the Lincoln Grand Prix has a cobbled climb to match either of the latter: a half-mile long 25 percent ascent through the heart of the ancient city to the Norman cathedral. In the US, the Philadelphia Grand Prix includes cobbles on Cresson Street on the fearsome Manayunk Wall climb.

CODES
As police forces in Europe investigated DOPING in the early 21st century, tapping phone calls and intercepting e-mails, drug-takers in cycling and their doctors and suppliers began to use cyphers to refer to certain drugs and practices. In one Belgian case, “wasp” referred to the blood booster Aranesp, a “wasps' nest” to a course of the drug, while a “washing machine” was a centrifuge used to measure blood levels and “strawberry jam” meant EPO. In the Operación Puerto blood-doping operation, the riders whose blood was stored for reinjection were referred to by coded names, not all of which have been deciphered. “Bella” was the German Jorg Jaksche; Ivan Basso of Italy was called “Birillo” after his dog; there is still speculation over the identity of “Hijo de Birillo” (Son of Birillo).

Codes were also used by FAUSTO COPPI and GINO BARTALI at the height of their rivalry
to pass on instructions to their
gregari
: Coppi would tell Sandrino Carrea to “slow down” when he wanted him to set a furious pace, while Bartali had a teammate look at Coppi's legs and shout “the vein” when a vein on his calf began pulsating, a sign that Coppi might be struggling.

Lance Armstrong refers to himself as Juan Pelota, most notably on Twitter, the pun being that
pelota
is Spanish for
ball
, and Armstrong had one testicle removed during testicular cancer treatment.

In Great Britain, meanwhile, after road racing was banned at the turn of the century, TIME TRIALLING was carried out on courses referred to by coded names to keep the events secret. Courses are still known by their code today, although they are deciphered in the governing body's handbook and website: the most famous of all was probably E72/25: E stands for the region, East, while 25 is the distance and 72 referred to a course starting on the A12 Colchester Bypass, where many British records were broken.

COLOMBIA
Ranks with FLANDERS, northern ITALY, and the Basque Country (see SPAIN) as a nation where cycling is part of the fabric; like the KEIRIN racers of Japan, however, Colombian cyclists are now largely out of the international mainstream. There was, however, a brief interlude in the 1980s and 1990s when they burst on to the pro-cycling scene and performed far better than cyclists from richer nations where cycling was far better resourced.

Cycling's place in Colombian culture is explored in depth in one of the finest cycle-racing BOOKS of recent years, Matt Rendell's
Kings of the Mountains
(Aurum, 2002). High altitude, poverty, and poor roads made Colombia inhospitable cycling country, but even so, the first races were held,
as in many other nations, before the end of the 19th century. The first Vuelta a Colombia was held in 1951; insanely tough due to the high mountains and abominable roads, 1,154 km and 10 stages long, it was won by Ephraim Forero Triviño, known simply as “the Zipa,” amid massive popular support.

A brief racing visit by FAUSTO COPPI lent new momentum to the sport in 1957, although whether Coppi was ever paid for his efforts remains unclear. In the 1960s the arrival of the first Colombian to succeed outside his own borders, Cochise Rodriguez, did change things, and by the 1970s, Colombians were dominant in South American racing; Cochise, meanwhile, took the world amateur HOUR RECORD in 1970, and added the pursuit world gold medal in Italy a year later, Colombia's first cycling world title.

Controversially, he was refused entry to the 1972 Olympics on the grounds that he had broken amateur rules on sponsorship. Instead, he turned pro with Bianchi in Italy, won two stages in the Giro, and became the first Colombian to finish the Tour.

In the 1980s the Colombians had begun to perform consistently in the mountains in world-level amateur races. When the Tour went open to amateurs in 1983 Colombia was the only nation to take up the challenge, with sponsorship from battery company Varta. The little climbers suffered on the flat stages but performed well enough in the Alps and Pyrenées, with Patrocinio Jimenez spending five days in the polka-dot King of the Mountain jersey.

Varta's sponsorship was a sound move as most Colombians followed the Tour on radio and the gabbling commentators declaiming down phone lines were a distinctive presence on the race for a decade. The following year the country's best racer, LUIS HERRERA, returned with a squad sponsored by Café de Colombia and took the prestigious finish at l'Alpe d'Huez ahead of LAURENT FIGNON and BERNARD HINAULT. In 1985
Herrera, “the little gardener,” won two more stages and was King of the Mountains; an estimated one million people turned out to welcome him home. He took Colombia's biggest win, the Vuelta a España, in 1987; the finish date, May 15, was declared a national holiday.

Others came to Europe with Herrera, mainly racing for Spanish teams, including Oliverio Rincon—winner of a Tour stage at Andorra in 1993—and the accident prone Fabio Parra, cruelly nicknamed “Parra-chute.” In 1995 the world road championships traveled to Colombia, held on an extremely hard circuit at the town of Duitama, with Abraham Olano winning the pro road race. In 2000 Santiago Botero ground out an improbable victory in the Tour's King of the Mountains title.

Since then, Colombian cycling has been off the world stage. Rendell puts it down variously to the rise of the national soccer team, the economic decline and migration that has accompanied the country's narco-war, and the UCI's inability to boost cycling in poorer, marginal countries. As a footnote, cycling has had links with Colombia's drugs syndicates; down-on-their-luck pros traveling to Europe were employed as couriers, while in one of the most dramatic passages in Rendell's
Kings of the Mountains
he interviews Roberto Escobar, brother of the notorious drug king Pablo. Roberto, a fine cyclist, watched Coppi and Koblet on their racing trip to Colombia and ended up making bikes and running teams. His brother, meanwhile, had a velodrome built in his hometown of Medellin so he could bet on the races held there.

COMMONWEALTH GAMES
There was no cycling in the inaugural British Empire Games of 1930; bike races appeared four years later. The Games take place on a four-year cycle which
alternates with the Olympics. It was not until 1974, after various name changes, that the name Commonwealth Games was settled upon. Women's cycling did not appear until 1990, while the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur saw the introduction of team events, and in 2002, in Manchester, events for athletes with disability were introduced. Alongside the senior Games, the Youth Games for athletes under 18 is run.

Since the advent of lottery funding (see GREAT BRITAIN) the British cycling team has sent large numbers of athletes to compete under their various national banners, but with management and logistics backup from within the Great Britain Olympic team set-up. Years of Australian domination in the cycling disiplines came to an end at the Games in 2002 in Manchester.

Born:
Swansea, Wales, April 13, 1983

 

Major wins:
Olympic road race champion 2008; world road race champion 2008; Commonwealth Games road race champion 2002; women's World Cup 2003, 2006; Giro d'Italia 2004; 10 times GB national champion between 1999 and 2009; MBE 2009

 

Further reading:
Cycle for Life
, Nicole Cooke, Abbeville Press, 2009

 

The Welsh woman was the flag carrier for British women's cycling throughout the early 2000s, from her unique triple junior world titles (road, time trial, mountain bike) in 2001 to her unprecedented double of world and Olympic road race titles in 2008, when she was elected
Sunday Times
Sportswoman of the Year.

Even while attending Brynteg Comprehensive in south Wales—where rugby star Gavin Henson was a fellow pupil—Cooke was a precocious talent, the youngest rider ever to win the senior women's national title, which she achieved at 16. She is known for her total
determination and consistency in major title races, taking two bronze and a silver medal in world road titles between 2003 and 2006.

Her career has been disrupted by the economic difficulties that beset women's racing—several of her teams have suffered financial problems. She has also had to contend with injury, mainly to her left knee, which has twice required surgery. After a second operation, in late 2007—which deprived her of a third title in the women's World Cup—she contemplated quitting the sport.

Cooke truly bounced back the following year. Her victory in Beijing came on a soaking wet day after her teammate Emma Pooley split the field with a searing attack. It set up the GB cycling team for an unprecedented medal rush. In Varese six weeks later, Cooke rode the perfect tactical race to triumph in a sprint finish from the Dutchwoman Marianne Vos, so often her nemesis in previous seasons. She now spends most of her time in her adopted home near Lugano, Switzerland.

 

(SEE
DAVE BRAILSFORD
,
CHRIS HOY
,
BRADLEY WIGGINS
FOR MORE ON GB'S SUCCESS IN 2008)