Cyclopedia (4 page)

AUDAX
The term is used to denote long group rides covered in a set time in a single day and dates back to a group of Italian cyclists who rode from Rome to Naples—230 km—in June 1897.
The newspapers referred to those who completed the distance as
audace
—audacious—and when Neapolitan cyclists made the return trip they formed a club for riders who could do over 200 km in a day; the newspaper term was translated into Latin,
audax
, and the group called itself Audax Italiano. The rides are called Randonnées—a French term meaning an outing using any means of transport—and the riders
randonneurs
.

The notion of group rides within a certain time, halfway between leisure and pure competition, gained pace internationally when the TOUR DE FRANCE's father, HENRI DESGRANGE, founded a French body in 1904. Desgrange's paper
L'Auto
—organizer of the Tour—ran the first Audax event in which medals and certificates were awarded to finishers; yellow, the color of
L'Auto
's pages and the leader's jersey in the Tour, remains the color of 200 km medals.

Audax rides differ from the more recently invented CYCLOSPORTIVES such as L'ÉTAPE DU TOUR in that in theory their events have to be ridden at a predetermined average speed—this was 18 kph until 1945—and there may be a “ride leader” who cannot be overtaken. The idea is to discourage racing. In practice there has been a rift in the movement and this is not universally followed. PARIS–BREST–PARIS, the largest and oldest Audax Randonnée, is not run on this basis; unlike cyclosportives, however, riders are set a minimum time, which means that superfast cyclists may have to wait for controls to open. Additionally, while some 'sportives have assistance cars and are fully signposted, Audaxes emphasise self-sufficiency.

Today, Audaxes are run over the set distances of 200, 400, and 600 km; qualification for major events such as Paris–Brest–Paris depends on completion of a certain number of distance rides, which is checked by reference to the rider's
brevet
book, which is stamped by the organizers. Events are thus sometimes also known as brevets.

 

AUSTRALIA
The bicycle has a long history here, beginning with its use in the 1880s by gold prospectors in the bush. Cycles were also used for early postal services and by groups of itinerant sheep-shearers. Track racing began early in Australia with the Austral run in 1887 by the Melbourne Bicycle Club at the MCG over two miles; the discipline would remain important for the next 120 years.

The first Australian cycling star was a SIX-DAY rider in the heyday of the American events, Reggie MacNamara, known as the Iron Man. He moved to the US in 1912 and rode 115 of the events. His was one of the longest pro careers ever: he did not retire until 1939 when he was 50 years old. By then he had made a fortune but he ended his days penniless, working as a doorkeeper at Madison Square Garden, his stomach so damaged by the lifestyle and the drugs that he could not keep food down for more than half an hour.

The first road race in the Southern Hemisphere was Warrnambool—Melbourne, first run in 1895 and now the longest one-day race in the world at 299 km, as well as the second oldest. By 1909, the Australasian road championship was drawing over 500 entries. But Australia enjoyed only a sporadic international presence, simply because it was so far from the European heartland. In 1920, for example, the sprinter Bob Spears, son of a sheep farmer, became world champion in the discipline and made headlines at French tracks for giving boomerang lessons in between races.

Professionals Don Kirkham and Snowy Munro did manage to finish the Tour in 1914, having spent the season racing in Europe as part of an Australian squad, riding classics such as Milan–San Remo and Paris–Roubaix. Kirkham and Munro rode the Tour as
domestiques
to the Frenchman Georges Passerieu; no Australian would again attempt the race until SIR HUBERT OPPERMAN made headlines in Europe and back home in the 1930s.

Australia continued to produce talented track riders such as Russell Mockridge, who won the Olympic kilometer title in 1952 and finished the Tour three years later, but internationally, the turning point came in the 1980s. In 1981 PHIL ANDERSON wore the yellow jersey briefly in the TOUR DE FRANCE, while in 1987 under the guidance of Charlie Walsh the Australian Institute of Sport began a cycling program that churned out droves of fine track racers—who dominated racing at the 2004 OLYMPIC GAMES—and guided their riders to the road through the formation of a European academy in Tuscany, and a pro team sponsored by GIANT.

Anderson had already been followed to Europe by talented racers such as Allan Peiper (a member of the FOREIGN LEGION), Stephen Hodge, and Neil Stephens, but the AIS program produced so much talent that by the late 1990s and early years of the 21st century, Australia was a stronger presence—certainly in performance terms, and sometimes even numerically—in the Tour de France than traditional cycling nations such as Belgium and Holland.

Robbie McEwen twice won the Tour's most prestigious stage finish, on the Champs-Elysées (1999 and 2002) and won the green jersey in the latter year; Stuart O'Grady managed two spells in the yellow jersey (1998 and 2001), while Brad McGee landed the prologue time trial in 2003. An Australian event of truly international stature came onto the calendar in 2005 with the promotion of the Tour Down Under, which opens the UCI's ProTour calendar in January.

With Cadel Evans, meanwhile, Australia finally found a rider capable of challenging for overall titles in major Tours. Evans began racing as a mountain-biker, winning the World Cup in 1998 and 1999 before transferring to the road with Saeco and Mapei then T-Mobile.

He is a volatile character not exactly popular with the media, who were hardly charitable to him as he came close to winning both the 2007 and 2008 Tours de France: his moodiness earned him the nickname “Cuddles.” Late 2009 saw him truly make history with a late solo attack to win Australia's first world title in the men's elite race at Mendrisio (see DOGS to learn how his love for his pet colored his relations with the media).

BAHAMONTES
, Federico

(b. Spain, 1928)

 

Spain's first TOUR DE FRANCE winner, and one of the finest mountain climbers the sport has ever produced. The “Eagle of Toledo” was the first rider to be crowned King of the Mountains in all three major Tours, a feat emulated only by LUIS HERRERA of Colombia. He won the best-climber award in the Tour de France six times, a record that stood for 40 years. He is also one of the few cyclists to race the Vuelta, Giro, and Tour in the same year, finishing 6th, 17th, and 8th in the three events in 1958.

Bahamontes is celebrated as the rider who would race away from the field on the Tour's great passes, then would stop and eat an ice cream at the top. That's actually one of the race's great myths, a one-off incident, as Bahamontes explained in an interview: “one of my spokes broke on the way up [the Galibier], so I attacked so that the repair could be done at the top. But the team car with the spare was stuck behind the bunch, so I bought an ice cream to pass the time.”

Bahamontes turned to cycling as a way of escaping starvation during the Spanish civil war, won his first race at 17, and was King of the Mountains in the Tour at his first attempt in 1954. He was received by the dictator General Franco after winning the Tour in 1959. His victory came partly thanks to a stalemate in the French team, which had two leaders, JACQUES ANQUETIL and Roger Rivière, neither of whom would work with the other. Bahamontes was a nervous, irrritable man who threw his bike into a ravine in the 1954 Tour because he was
fed up and once chased a rival through the peloton brandishing a pump. After retirement he ran a bike shop in his home town.

 

(SEE ALSO
SPAIN
,
WAR
,
POLITICS
)

Contender for the title of cycling's biggest-selling author, Ballantine introduced generations of Britons and Americans to cycling as a lifestyle through his million-selling
Richard's Bicycle Books
series, which have been market-leaders since the first one was launched in 1972. Ballantine was an adept trend reader, founding the UK's first glossy cycling magazine for the general market—
Bicycle Magazine
in 1981—and importing some of the first MOUNTAIN BIKES to the UK.

Prompted by the 1970s oil crisis, Ballantine was an early advocate of cycling as part of a green lifestyle, arguing strongly against the universal use of motor vehicles and suggesting that cycling was life-enhancing and liberating.
The Bicycle Book
, a practical guide to cycling for the novice, has been compared to Alex Comfort's
Joy of Sex
for the way it changed mindsets and established a whole new market. Its great strengths are the accessible way that essential cycling knowledge is presented and Ballantine's passion and humor about everything two-wheeled—one section in the Commuting chapter is simply labelled “Joy.”

It also includes a robust section on dealing with DOGS, a guide to the dangers of cars, and argues strongly for DEFENSIVE CYCLING. Ballantine's latest work is
City Cycling
, which caters for the fast-growing cycle-commuter market.

Born:
Ponte a Ema, Italy, July 18, 1914

 

Died:
Ponte a Ema, Italy, May 5, 2000

 

Major wins:
Tour de France 1938, 1948, 12 stage wins; Giro d'Italia 1936–7, 1946, 17 stage wins; Milan–San Remo 1939–40, 1947, 1950; Giro di Lombardia 1936, 1939–40; Championship of Zurich 1946, 1948; Tour of Switzerland 1946–7

 

Nicknames:
the Pious One, the Iron Man, the Old One

 

The Italian remains the oldest man to win the TOUR DE FRANCE in the postwar era, triumphing in 1948 at the age of 34, 10 years after his first victory in the event. His career was one of cycling's longest, 19 years spanning three decades; he won his first Italian national title in 1935, his last in 1952 (see LONGEVITY for other durable cyclists).

Bartali was famed for his epic RIVALRY with FAUSTO COPPI and for his fervent CATHOLICISM—he had a private chapel in his home in Tuscany and famously attended mass before stage starts in the Tour and Giro. He was also said never to have sworn once in seven years, and to disapprove of fellow cyclists urinating during races. Bartali was courted by Benito Mussolini's fascists—Il Duce put pressure on him to ride the 1937 Tour—but he refused to wear the party insignia.

Like Coppi he lost the best years of his career to the Second World War. During the conflict he carried letters and forged documents hidden in his bike; he appeared to be merely training but was in fact acting as a courier for a Catholic network that was smuggling Jews out of Italy. The material was used to forge passports.

Postwar he became friendly with the Christian Democrat Italian prime minister Alcide de Gasperi. Bartali's victory in the Tour in 1948 came as Italy descended into chaos and near revolution following the attempted murder of the Communist party leader Palmiro Togliatti. Before the critical stage through the ALPS, de Gasperi called Bartali at his hotel in Cannes and asked him to win for his country.

He broke away through the Alps to win the critical mountain stage, and the revolution was averted. Although historians contend that the tumult in Italy might well have
died away whether or not Bartali had triumphed in the Tour, he has become celebrated as the man who prevented a revolution by winning it.

 

(SEE ALSO
WAR
,
POLITICS
)

BAUER, Steve
(b. Canada, 1959)

While Alex Stieda has the honour of being the first Tour de France yellow jersey wearer from CANADA, Bauer blazed a lone trail as the country's Tour de France star through the late 1980s and early 1990s, spending a total 14 days in the
maillot jaune
, and achieving Canada's highest Tour finish of fourth in 1988. He was also Canada's first CLASSIC winner, taking the Championship of Zurich in 1989, and his career at the highest level lasted from his silver medal ride in the 1984 OLYMPIC GAMES road race at Los Angeles to the 1996 Games in Atlanta, the year he retired.

Bauer turned professional for the La Vie Claire team alongside BERNARD HINAULT in 1985, and won the first stage of the 1988 Tour de France riding for the Helvetia team run by Hinault's old manager Paul Koechli; he then wore the yellow jersey for five days. Later that year he was involved in one of the most controversial incidents seen in any WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS, when he and Claude Criquielion of Belgium collided while sprinting for the finish of the pro road race in Ronsse, Belgium. Criquielion sued Bauer for assault and the case dragged on for three years before going Bauer's way.

In 1990 Bauer was on the wrong end of perhaps the closest finish to PARIS–ROUBAIX, coming second to Eddy Planckaert by a few millimeters, but later that year he was one of four riders who gained 10 minutes in the first stage of the Tour de France, and he ended up in
the yellow jersey for nine days before eventually finishing 27th overall. In 1993, riding for Motorola, Bauer turned up at Paris–Roubaix on one of the strangest bikes ever seen there—an Eddy Merckx machine with a drastically relaxed seat angle nicknamed the stealth bike. It had a massively long wheelbase, a lengthened chain, and a special saddle with a raised back.

BBAR (British Best All Rounder) The BBAR is the mainstay of British TIME TRIALLING, a season-long contest to decide the best endurance specialist of the year. The rankings are decided according to average speeds set over three disciplines—50 and 100 miles and 12 hours for men, and 25, 50, and 100 miles for women. Men who achieve an average of over 22 mph are given certificates; for women the cutoff is 20 mph. There are also team and veteran rankings and competitions for school-age boys and girls over shorter distances. Individual clubs also run their own BBAR contests.

The BBAR was founded by the magazine
Cycling
in 1930, and the first winner was Frank Southall, who went on to win the contest four times in a row. After the war, the time trialling governing body, the Road Time Trials Council, took over the contest; until 1976, the average speed calculations were made by a Manchester cyclist named Tom Barlow using a slide rule. The women's contest was dominated for a quarter of a century by the late BERYL BURTON, a record that stands out in all sports.

BICYCLE
From the Latin “two wheels.” Although there are claims that LEONARDO DA VINCI dreamed up a bike, the earliest
two-wheeled human-powered machines were produced at the start of the 19th century—first the DRAISIENNE or HOBBY HORSE, which didn't have any pedals, and later the BONESHAKER, which did. What followed was a constant search for improvement in any area where mechanics came into play, from industry to personal transport, and a wide variety of cycle designs were patended, many for tricycles and quadricycles, none of which caught on.

In the early 1840s KIRKPATRICK MACMILLAN and the Frenchman Alexandre Lefebvre both produced rear-wheel-driven machines that never became popular; instead the HIGH-WHEELER took over before the first SAFETY BICYCLES were produced in the 1880s, with the definitive pattern set by JAMES STARLEY's Rover in 1885.

Radical variations on this basic bike design, truly established at the end of the 19th century, have been relatively rare. The Moulton small-wheeler from the 1960s is one departure that has enjoyed enduring popularity. The BMX bike and rear-suspended cross-country mountain bike are others, while MIKE BURROWS's Lotus monocoque and GRAEME OBREE's cross-beamed frame are reminders that we should never be content with the status quo.

 

(SEE
MOULTON
,
OBREE
,
PEDERSEN
FOR INVENTORS WHO TRIED TO BREAK THE MOLD;
BRAKES
,
GEARS
,
WHEELS
,
TIRES
,
FRAMES
FOR HOW THESE COMPONENTS DEVELOPED)

 

 

BICYCLE LANES
Famously crap, except in HOLLAND (go to that country's section to find out why this is the case). The first cycle lane in Britain opened in 1934, alongside the A40 in West London and was two and a half miles long and 2.5 m wide on either side of the road. Even then cyclists were complaining of a lack of investment in facilities and things have hardly improved since. Every urban cyclist has their own horror story of cars parked where they shouldn't be, lanes that lead onto main thoroughfares and stop just when they are most needed, and lanes that last, oh, two meters if you are lucky. The phenomenon was significant enough that it generated its own pocket novelty book,
Crap Cycle Lanes
. We read it and wept.