Favourite tour riders

[Kevin Rynne]

Who was yours, Get Jan Theunisse was one of mine along with Pantaini. Just found this link, any one else remember him?

http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Rink/1947/

[adrian]

Crikey - he's the spit of Neil Young circa 1971

[jon avery]

I know it's a cliche`s but mine is Lance, if it wasn't for him i doubt if i would have had any interest in cycling.

[huw williams]

Kev - Theunisse was a mate a few years back - he moved into off road racing and was manager of the specialised racing team when Marga Fullana and Phillipe Meirhaege were so succesfull

They hadn't won anything for years and suddenly they started winning everything - so with Theunisse's record on drugs everyone suspected that he'd brought his 'experience' in that area into mountain biking with him.

Sure enough a few years later Meirhaege tested positive but no one could prove that it was Theunise's involvement. I always found him a good bloke to work with and never got tired of his stories of the days on Alpe d'huez.

My best memory is of a specialized team ride we did through the Napa Valley vinyards in California. He stuck Marga, the world champion at the time, in the middle of the pack cos it was windy and she was very slightly built, so he didn't want her getting tired - "nobody comes past me" he insisted, and he duly raised the pace up to a metronimic 25mph and didn't get off the front for 35 miles - and this was 10 years after he'd stopped racing. We were all creamed when we got back and he looked like he hadn't started.

The downside was that he kept suffering heart complaints as the result of his drug taking when he was racing. - Quite often he'd go AWOL for a couple of weeks in the middle of the season to go into hospital with heart problems - not good when you're the team manager. It used to contol his life and as far as I knbow it still does - he couldn't drink, had a very restricetd diet and had quite a strict training programme intended to thin his blood enough to keep him alive - all as a result of a few years on the juice when racing on the road. As he got older he also developed an alarming similarity to an ape, there was hair all over the place!

There you go guys - drugs, is it worth it?

[huw williams]

As for favourite tour riders:

Lemond
Rasmussen
Indurain

[siwickm]

My favourite is Magnus Backstedt:

1. I have met him and he was very friendly.
2. He is very tall, like me.
3. He is very heavy, like me.
4. He won Paris - Roubaix, unlike me but I have not tried.

Cheers

Marek...

[Brian Robinson]

Tightrope, especially looking back over the years:

1. Pantani (Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!)
2. Ullrich (Flawed but talented)
3. Kelly (Hard as they come! Makes McEwan look like a sissy)

Bri

[Stu Merckx Man]

1 bernard hinault
2 frank schleck
3 jan ullrich

[Andrew G]

Good old Gert, with his flowing locks while galloping up a mountain. He was good - Huw, am I right in thinking when he did mountain biking (and even still now) he rode that well 'ard Crocodile Challenge race in Oz, or have I imagined that?

1) Bernard Hinault (Lance doesn't know what "a look" is compared to those the badger gave).
2) Sean Kelly (Favourite rider of all time - the ultimate hard man)
3) Robert Millar (Britain's "forgotten" highest finisher)

Other favourites were Chiappuci, Lemond, Durant.
I don't like the current tour riders so much. Not necessarily their fault, but both the tour route and the way teams ride it has become too formulaic. You know what's going to happen, and when most of the time - radios haven't helped.
Discounting last year's tour (who won?) for the disappointing drug reasons, and only 2003 had any real "what happens next" excitement for ages.

[John the old'un]

No doubt about my favourites.
Coppi
Bartali
Kubler
Koblet
Geminiani

And in more recent years, Anquetil, who I saw at the Albert Hall presenting the awards at the RTTC do.

[Graham O]

I would say Stephen Roach...

1) He is one of only 3 to win the worlds, the tour de france and tour of italy in the same year.

2) The 'its stephen roach coming through the mist' moment. One of the best Tour de france moments ever. Hope you know what I mean.

Other than that..Robert Millar !!

[Jon H]

1) Indurain for being da man in the early nineties.
2) Lemond for that '89 win by 8 seconds, thereby making Fignon even more of a grumpy sod than normal.
3) Cipollini for dominating the sprints in style (for the first week anyway).

[Paul H]

1) Landis
2) Lemond
3) Kelly

[Stu Merckx Man]

[quote] Landis

[Snoop Doug]

1) Tom Simpson
2) Marco Pantani
3) Nicole Cooke