I'm over in Germany at the moment visiting Betty's parents and brother for a few days. A couple of days back I got to do one of my favourite things, visit the beer shop here in Hameln. For me Germany and Belgium produce some of the best beers in the world so to be able to visit the local beer shop was an absolute treat. Kai (my brother-in-law) and I spent plenty of time looking through the vast collection of brews on offer and ended up purchasing a good selection mainly based, if we're honest, on whichever labels caught our eyes the most. The image above shows some of the different bottles we left the shop with. Tonight we shall celebrate bringing in the new year by sampling many of them.
I'm about half way through reading Matt Rendell's Olympic Gangster book about the life of French cycling champion, fortune hunter and outlaw José Beyaert. Beyaert who died in 2005 led a rich, diverse and immensly interesting life.
Below is Rendell's 2005 obituary to the 1948 Olympic champion. As soon as I finish the book I'll post a review.
At the London Olympic Games in 1948, José Beyaert, who has died aged 79, became the last French cyclist to win the Olympic road race. Riding professionally between 1949 and 1951, he took five wins and rode two Tours de France, before migrating to Colombia and becoming the first overseas rider to win its national cycling tour. As a coach, he brought the first Colombian cyclists to Europe. Later, he was a radio commentator, and his wife, Louisette, ran an excellent French restaurant in Bogota. But Beyaert led an Indiana Jones existence: he traded in Colombia's emerald mines, built a sawmill deep in the rainforest and exported balsa to Japan and the United States.
Born in Lens, Beyaert was the older son of a Flemish labourer who had migrated to the mines of the Pas-de-Calais in 1920. His father then became a shoemaker and moved his family to the Paris banlieue of Pantin. During the second world war, Beyaert raced in the Winter Velodrome in Paris - then used as a transit centre for French Jews being shipped to concentration camps - and worked for the resistance, moving weapons on his bike.
After his Olympic triumph, he quarrelled with his team director, another French cycling hero, René Vietto, whose communism clashed with Beyaert's headstrong individualism. Beyaert also told colourful tales of fist fights with enforcers working for bigger names, and claimed that during the 1951 Tour de France, race director Jacques Goddet expressly forbade him from attacking.
Then Beyaert accepted an invitation from the Colombian Cycling Federation to open the new velodrome in Bogota. He won the 1952 Tour of Colombia, and, as he prepared to leave, the country's vice-president asked him how much he expected to earn back in Europe. Beyaert concocted a vastly inflated figure, which the vice-president doubled, and the Frenchman accepted.
After his cycling career, Beyaert went into the emerald and timber trades. After decades missing, presumed dead, he was rediscovered after Henri Charrière's Papillon caught the French imagination. Rightwing writers, debunking Papillon, lionised Beyaert as a more acceptable swashbuckler.
In fact, Beyaert had no wish to be a role model. He had been known to police as a teenage streetfighter and had arrived late at the London Olympics after Pantin's mayor refused to sign his good conduct certificate. Only government intervention got him to the games. In Colombia, he admitted: "I was a violent man, but I did not want others to bear my responsibilities."
He had also befriended drugs barons and executioners: a Paris-Match photograph showed him beside the emerald and cocaine billionaire José RodrÌquez Gacha. "A good man," he would say of the sadist and serial murderer, who orchestrated Pablo Escobar's terror in Colombia. In 2001, guerrilla-kidnappers came for him. Beyaert slipped away, met up with his family, and escaped back to France.
His wife died in 1999. He is survived by his son, three grandchildren and his brother.
·José Beyaert, cyclist and trader, born October 1 1925; died June 11 2005
I made this Italian Bustrengo cake yesterday as an alternative to the traditional English Christmas pudding. I took the recipe from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italy book. It's really easy to make and super moist and tasty, yum!
Instead of energy bars just wrap up some of the leftovers in foil and stick it in your jersey pocket for on-board refuelling during a bike ride.
This post has nothing to do with either cycling or running but has everything to do with getting into the Christmas spirit.
My wife Betty, my sister Amy and I arrived at my parents only a few hours ago. Within only a short time Amy took it upon herself to create such a delicious cocktail that I decided I'd feature it here on the blog.
Grown Up Cherry Coke tastes seriously close to Coca-Cola's original only this version contains a couple of extra pleasant surprises. Below is the recipe written by Amy. I can recommend it as a perfect aperitif this Christmas:
The recipe for this rather delectable beverage is as follows:
Plenty of ice in the glass 1 shot of cherry brandy 1 shot of vodka (decent stuff please) Top up of coke (diet if you're sweet enough or full sugar if you like the feeling of your teeth rotting) 1 cocktail stick per drink...push a kitch red glacé cherry onto a cocktail stick and balance it glamorously between two edges of the glass, preferably a classy tumbler. Stir with a teaspoon and serve to your guests. Sweet. Literally and metaphorically.
How time flies, the festive season is already upon us and new year celebrations are just around the corner. All this has got me thinking about what I consider to be some of my favourite moments in pro-cycling from not only this year but also from the entire decade. There are plenty of memorable moments to choose from so I've decided to indulge from time to time by featuring anecdotes, images and clips from different races
I'll start with one of my favourites from this years spring classics, the Tour of Flanders. I was lucky enough to experience the incident packed race live and have many great personal memories from being in Flanders for the weekend. Betty and I ventured over to Belgium to watch the race from atop the Kapelmuur in Geraadsbergen. I know it's an obvious choice of location but since this was the first time we'd been to Belgium to watch a classic we decided to do it from a point on the course with not only great atmosphere but also of great strategic importance.
On the morning of the big day we cycled to the Kapelmuur from our hotel, a distance of maybe 30km. We immediately (unofficially) tagged onto the amateur Tour of Flanders sportive and after less than 1km of pave my poor De Rosa's breaks started jamming and the bar tape started to peel off. I ended up stopping at a conveniently situated bike shop at the end of the pave section to get the bike sorted, pathetic really. I have say chapeau to Betty through as her LeMond held up pretty well against the bone shaking farm tracks.
Eventually we made it to the town of Geraadsbergen and cycled through it's historical cobbled streets weaving our way gradually upward towards the famous Kapelmuur. As we got closer the road barriers started to line the streets and as the crowds built the excitement grew. We indexed through the gears on our bikes as the incline steepened. I remember getting a cheer from some onlookers as we got to within 500 metres of the Kapelmuur, just before where Fabian Cancellara attacked Tom Boonen.
Betty positioned herself in a great spot next to a few pro photographers. For the best part of three hours she patiently waited for the race to arrive. Her patience paid off because she ended up taking many great shots of the different riders as they reached the final bend before arriving at the Muur's summit. The above image of Cancellara was taken by Betty just moments after he'd attacked.
What a day it was for Team Saxo Bank. They managed to demonstrate the best and the worst in bike changing manoeuvres. Matti Breschel had looked so strong but lost big time when his mechanic managed to hand him Stuart O'Grady's bike by mistake, a mistake that arguably cost poor Matti the race. Then of course we were treated to the most perfect of bike changes when Cancellara, and the mechanic, showed us how it should really be done. I wonder if it was the same mechanic on both occasions? It is after these events that Cancellara attacks with what looks like such nonchalance. Remember this was the week before rumours started flying around about whether or not Cancellara had a concealed motor in the frame of his bike. Judging by the way Cancellara stamped his authority on the Muur against a man of Boonen's calibre it shows us that Cancellara was in the absolute best form of his life. Check out the great clip below showing Cancellara attacking then cresting the Kapelmuur.
Visiting Vlaanderens Mooiste (Flanders' finest) for the first time was an absolute treat and one that I can recommend to any fan of bike racing. In fact it has wet my appetite for more and I'll no doubt be making the short hop over to Belgium again in the near future.
See more of Betty's images from the Tour of Flanders 2010 here.
At the beginning of the ‘80s, Nelson Vails was just a Harlem kid couriering to make a buck on the streets of New York. By 1984, he had left the streets behind, swapped them for the velodrome and had taken silver in the individual sprint at that summer’s Olympic Games in LA.
To make it from Harlem to the pinnacle of cycle sport takes talent, discipline, willpower and the ability to go like the stink. Vails had all of these. He was given a bike by his older brother at the age of six, and at 21 was supporting his family by wearing the yellow jersey of Cycle Service Center, one of the best messenger outfits in town.
The early ‘80s, before the fax machine, was the golden age of messengering. A time when 5,000 messengers ruled Manhattan’s avenues, and a guy with good legs could make $500 a week, no sweat, and still be at Washington Square Park by 6pm on a Friday to drink beer and party with his fellow messengers. And Nelson ‘Cheetah’ Vails was the best of the best, commanding the high-paying jobs from one end of Manhattan to the other, because he was reliable and, like his nickname suggests, lightning quick.
‘Shit, guys, I was good,’ remembers Nelson. ‘I was fast. I'd jump on an elevator and it would close right in your face, I would beat the light-beam, and slip right between the doors as they were closing, so that by the time the elevator comes back down to get you I've already dropped off my package and I'm on that same elevator.’ He lived the life, but his love of the bike led him to train obsessively, in the early mornings and into the night after a full day jousting with the New York traffic.
Then, at the weekends, he’d race: ‘I enjoyed kicking your ass at the weekends,’ he says. ‘We’d do the messenger thing, and party till five in the morning at some party or club – today they’d call them raves. Then at 6am, I'm on the start line: I win 50 bucks, and go take all my buddies from that party the night before out to breakfast. They're all waiting for me, so I had to win. It was one of those pressure things – like, “You'd better win some money ‘cause you're buying breakfast!”’ The kid was making waves and his raw talent was spotted. At the National Championships he went up against big-name riders and, in his own words, ‘blew their doors off’. He progressed to the national team, and travelled to train and race behind the Iron Curtain at a time when very few Westerners were allowed. ‘I got to see the world through a bicycle wheel,’ he says. ‘How many kids from Harlem get to go and live in Warsaw? To train and race every week in Budapest or East Berlin? Only me and my team-mates – a handful – were able to experience that, and the memories will die with me.’
In 1983, he took sprint gold at the Pan-American championships in Caracas, but did not gain a place in the Olympic squad – a misfortune that was miraculously reversed when the Russians boycotted the LA Games, freeing up spots for other countries at the key track events. And there he proved himself to the world, coming second only to his fellow American, Mark Gorski.
After the Olympics, Nelson continued to represent his country, notably at the UCI World Championships. He had a cameo in messenger-inspired film Quicksilver, alongside Kevin Bacon, and in 1988 he turned pro, moving to Belgium to make his fortune on the six-day circuit – the only American cyclist other than Greg LeMond based there at the time. He also raced five seasons of the Keirin international series in Japan, mixing in the notoriously cut-throat rough and tumble, and making an impression wherever he went for his humility and friendliness.
Yet Nelson never lost his street savvy. ‘The whole messenger thing, that New York mentality, helped my whole cycling career,’ he says, looking back on it all. ‘As far as awareness for racing on the track, as a sprinter, in a tactical game, I was able to maximise it as a messenger. A mass start race on the track, it's like being in NYC downtown, with a bunch of cars and cabs. It’s the same concept, so you don't allow yourself to get into a jam.’
Nelson has inspired a generation and more of street riders and track fans the world over. We wanted to interview him for our book, FIXED, and finally tracked him down through a Craigslist ad he’d placed – he was selling a bike. Speaking to him and learning his story was a privilege, and we’re pleased to have hooked him up with Rich at Urban Hunter, to create these limited-edition prints and T-shirts.
The print, which celebrates his street profile and racing achievements, is designed by Peter Locke for Urban Hunter, and all work was done in collaboration with Nelson.
Max Leonard, co-author of FIXED: GLOBAL FIXED-GEAR BIKE CULTURE
In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk.
I'd never heard of this guy before listening to him on the clip below. He talks alot of sense.
This latest season 2 episode is dedicated to the women of the Cervélo Test Team.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I realy hope Beyond The Peloton film makers Joseph Finkleman and Booker Sim are able to continue their excellent film making with the newly formed Garmin-Cervélo team when the new season begins.
Look what I just stumbled upon, my all time favourite cycling movie, A Sunday in Hell, posted in it's entirety on YouTube! That's right one clip showing the entire movie without any gaps.
I appreciate most of you cycling nerds out there will, like me, have already watched this cult classic many times over but for those who haven't yet had the pleasure, well your in for one HELL of a treat.
Never mind the holiday season, roll on the spring Classics!!!
I was out running on Victoria Park here in London the other day and was listening to a podcast as I ran, nothing usual there. What made the situation unique this time though was listening to the immensely inspiring and tragic story of Ethiopian running legend Abebe Bikila on Steve Runner's Phedippidations Podcast.
As I ran I decided to contact Steve and ask him if he'd let me publish his story. Steve kindly obliged and so here, for your reading pleasure, is his story of Abebe Bikila:
Today I will tell you about an amazing person who lived his life to the top. It’s an interesting life with high and low points, with pride and shame, and obstacles which were overcome leading towards an eventual spiral into disaster…but in the end, redemption and glory.
August 7th, 1932 marked the date of the Los Angeles Olympic Marathon; and on the same day, the birth of Abebe Bikila in the remote mountainous village of Jato near the town of Mendida, about three hours north of the Ethiopian Capital of Addis Ababa.
This is wheat, cattle and wool country. Abebe lived in a round, straw roofed mud hut called at tukul. His father was a shepherd, and Abebe would mind the herds barefoot, walking and running to school and playing the game of ganna; a kind of long distance version of hockey, with goal posts marked miles away from each other.
In 1935 the Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini sent his troops into Ethiopia to conquer the country, but they were unable to secure the countryside. After the liberation in 1941, Abebe’s family returned to their home in Jatto, where Abebe attended school at a local church. At the age of 19, in 1951, he moved to the capital city of Addis Ababa to be with his mother who had moved there.
It was at around this time that Emperor Haile Selassie visited Stockholm, Sweden to ask that country for help in training Ethiopian soldiers to serve as his Imperial Guard. It was with this force that Abebe Bikila found work, as he enlisted to serve his country and his emperor in this elite corps.
While serving with the Imperial Guard, he would spend his free time playing football, volleyball and basketball. By the end of 1956, he had taken up the sport of running.
And that’s where the Imperial Guards Swedish sports trainer and director of physical education by the name of Onni Niskanen observed the now 24 year old Abebe running the hilly 12 mile (or 20 kilometer) course between the town of Sululta to Addis Ababa and back.
Coach Niskanen trained the Guards at an old World War II camp, where he had trainees go for 20 mile runs in the 6000 foot high mountains, and 1,500 meter sprint repeats on the track. Bikila and his fellow trainees would run barefoot across this rough terrain. The Coach taught Bikila to relax as he ran, to conserve his energy by running with a relaxed and easy form.
In 1956, Coach Niskanen helped to train the first Ethiopian’s to attend the Melbourne Australia Olympic games, but they didn’t perform very well, so four years later he took three more Ethiopian athletes under his wing, including Abebe.
In July of 1960, Abebe ran and won his first marathon, the Armed Forces Championships marathon in Addis Ababa with a time of 2:39:50. In August of that he ran the Olympic trials, hoping for one of the two places for the Rome games, and he finished in an impressive 2:21:23, a new world record….but it wasn’t enough to guarantee him a place at the Olympics; however that changed when his teammate Wami Biratu, broke his ankle in a soccer match.
Coach Niskanen made the decision to enter Abebe Bikila in the men's marathon of the 17th Olympiad, the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
The Olympic Marathon route in the city of Rome, Italy was planned out to show the world Rome’s amazing architecture, history and splendor. The race was run at night, the first time the modern Olympic Marathon had been run in the evening, and it didn’t start in the Olympic Stadium…again, a first for this event: it began instead in the Campidoglio, a square designed by Michelangelo on Capitoline Hill. As the runners ran the course in the dark, the route was lit by Roman soldiers holding torches. Finally, the race ended on the Appian Way, an ancient road dating back to the early days of the Roman Empire.
It’s important to note that Abebe and his team mates generally trained and ran without shoes…but here in Rome, there was some concern that for the Ethiopians to run without shoes might tarnish the prestige of their country: giving the impression that Ethiopians were too poor to afford running shoes. Abebe went on a 10K run days before the race to test the shoes that were given to him, but found that they were too tight: and he developed blisters. It was then that he and his team-mate Abebe Wakjira decided they would run the race barefoot; however they feel felt shame among the other distance runners. In the hour before the race, they hid in their tent so as not to be seen without shoes.
The Mens Marathon began at 5:30 at night on the afternoon of September 10th, 1960. The sun was still in the brilliant blue sky and the Athletes assembled at the starting line before the statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Abebe and his teammate were unknowns to the Olympic press and the world. No one took them seriously.
Abebe was far behind the leaders. As the packs started to form however, he found himself in the second group of runners. By the 5K mark he was running at the back of the lead pack of five runners.
At the 15K mark the lead group, including Abebe was down to four. At the 18K mark Abebe was in second place, and for the rest of the race he would battle with the Moroccan elite runner Rhadi Ben Abdesselam for the win.
They passed the 30K marker just as the sun was setting, and Abebe took the lead. Journalists in the camera truck, driving just ahead of Abebe noted that he was running so lightly that his feet barely touched the ground.
While most of the other runners refueled with snacks and fluids along the course: Abebe kept running. At the 39.3 K mark they passed the Church of St Mary in Palmis, where legend says that Saint Peter met Jesus Christ as Peter was running away from Rome. Not far from here they ran past a forth century Ethiopian obelisk of Axum, stolen by Mussolini’s invading soldiers 25 years before. Coach Niskanen had instructed Abebe that when he saw the obelisk, he was to break into his final sprint. With only 2 kilometers to the finish, Abebe Bikila was five meters ahead and well out of reach of Rhadi.
He crossed the finish line in 2 hours, 15 minutes and 16.2 seconds, 8 minutes faster than Emil Zatopek’s 1952 Olympic record. He was so strong at the finish, that he stopped to touch his toes and jog in place a bit, telling his coach that he felt so good he could have run another 10 to 15 kilometer at the same speed!
Abebe Bikila had become the first black African to win a gold medal at the Olympics and he had done it barefoot!
The headlines in the Newspapers and on the radio proclaimed the fact that it had taken an entire Italian army to conquer Ethiopia, but only one Ethiopian soldier to conquer Rome.
In the year following the Rome Olympics, the world record holding Abebe Bikila won marathons in Greece, Czechoslovakia and Japan where Coach Niskanen convinced him to start wearing shoes in his races. At the end of the year he returned to Ethiopia and didn’t compete in International races until the 1963 Boston Marathon, where he finished in 5th place.
During this time, the commander of the Imperial Guard: General Mengistu Neway, plotted a political coup against the Emperor Haile Selassie which was to take place on December 13th while Selassie was in Brazil for a state visit. The coup failed because the Guard did not have the support of the Army, but fighting took place in the heart of Addis Ab-aba; many of those who were close to the Emperor were killed.
Abebe took no part in the coup, and was held in jail for only a short time because of his fame as an Olympic gold medalist.
He would go on to win the 1964 marathon Olympic trials in Addis Ababa with a time of 2:16:18.
But then, disaster struck. Six weeks before his team was due to leave for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic games, Abebe experienced an attack of appendicitis. He was rushed to the hospital and underwent surgery. His post operative condition was good enough for him to accompany his team to Tokyo, but he was unable to run at all for the 3 weeks between his surgery and the start of the men's marathon. No one expected Abebe to run the race, but still he toed the line.
In his 2008 book, Bikila: Ethiopia’s Barefoot Olympian published by Reportage Press, author Tim Judah wrote:
The Ethiopian team touched down in Tokyo at 6.30am on September 29. Everyone knew the marathon was going to be tough. Since Rome, the world's best time had been beaten three times. The British runner Basil Heatley had stormed to victory in the 1964 Windsor to Chiswick marathon with a time of 2 hours 13 minutes 55 seconds.
In the run-up to the race, which was to take place on October 21, Heatley recalls, "I won't say I wrote the Ethiopians off, but knowing that Bikila had had appendicitis... "
There were 68 athletes on the starting line. Bikila can be seen striding purposefully up to the back of the group. He was wearing shoes and white socks. He was one of the last out of the stadium, but soon began to close on the others. Once in front, no one could catch him. He hardly needed to look behind to know he was alone. Peter Wilson of the Daily Mirror dubbed Bikila a metronome. "There isn't, of course, an ounce of spare flesh on him and his legs could belong to some sinewy old rooster."
Bikila won his second gold with a new world best time of 2 hours 12 minutes 11.2 seconds. He was the first person to win two marathon gold medals. He was not just an Ethiopian hero now but a pan-African hero, too. A poll in Jeune Afrique magazine, which is sold all over Francophone Africa, found that he was the most popular person in Africa.
I’ll have a link to Tim Judah’s amazing book; Bikila: Ethiopia's Barefoot Olympian in the show notes for this episode, at steverunner.com.
In 1965 and 1966, Abebe ran and won three marathons. He suffered a stress fracture in his foot before he arrived in Mexico City for the 1968 Olympics, and had to drop out in the 10th mile.
He returned to Ethiopia, where Halie Selassie promoted him to Captain in the Imperial Guard, but a year later: disaster struck again. In 1969, during civil unrest in Addis Ababa, Abebe was driving his Volkswagen Beetle when he had to swerve away from a group of protesting students. He lost control of the car and landed in a ditch. He was rushed to the hospital, and then with the intervention of the emperor was sent to England for advanced medical treatment, where his condition improved…but there was nothing more that could be done.
Abebe Bikila, the first two time winning black African Olympic Gold Medalist, the hero of his beautiful country and inspiration to the entire world: was now paralyzed from the waist down. He would never run again.
He returned to Ethiopia on a stretcher to a huge crowd who cheered him in support. But Abebe did not accept his disability with sadness or despair. Coach Niskanen convinced him to compete in paraplegic archery competitions. Abebe joked that he would win the next Olympic marathon from his wheelchair.
He was invited as a special guest to the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, where he watched Frank Shorter win the men's marathon. After receiving his medal, Frank walked over to Abebe and shook his hand.
On October 23rd, 1973, Abebe Bikila suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Addis Ababa; a related complication to the car accident he had four years before, and died at the age of 41.
He left behind his wife and four children. His funeral in Addis Ababa was attended by 75,000 and Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia proclaimed a national day of mourning for Ethiopia’s national hero.
A stadium in Addis Ababa is named in his honor.
The American Community School of Addis Ababa dedicated its gymnasium to Abebe in the late 1960s and in August of 2005, a school was built in the town of Oromo, named Yaya Abebe Bikila Primary Village School. It’s located just a few hundred meters from the remains of Abebe’s birthplace of Jato.
Abebe once talked about his automobile accident with an air of acceptance: "Men of success meet with tragedy” he said “It was the will of God that I won the Olympics, and it was the will of God that I met with my accident. I accepted those victories as I accept this tragedy. I have to accept both circumstances as facts of life and live happily."
