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Words: Ian Cleverly | Photos: Marthein Smit
Extract from Rouleur 22
If there is such a thing as motor home envy among the cyclo-cross fraternity, then Ian Field is guilty as charged. Wandering the competitor’s parking area at this year’s Koppenbergcross near Oudenaarde in search of “Field de Brit”, as race commentators now refer to the slightly-built man from Kent, the pecking order becomes apparent.
Unveiling of the new season’s team kit invariably attracts a disproportionate amount of comment. There is little else to discuss over the winter before racing starts in earnest, so the designers of what the pro peloton will be sporting this year undergo close scrutiny while we twiddle our thumbs.
Race commentators and fans alike will have their work cut out if Garmin-Cervelo, Sky and Leopard-Trek are all on the front setting up their sprinters for a bunch gallop. (By the way, that’s pronounced ‘LAY-oh-pard’, not Leopard). It seems black is the new black. Telling yer Boasson Hagen from yer Haussler for yer Hushovd is the new challenge.
I won a time trial.
Nothing to shout about, you’re probably thinking, but it made me happy for a few weeks. Plus, to anyone who knows my (cough) fitness regime, it does sound highly unlikely. It was a complete and utter fluke, of course, and a few years back. It had actually slipped my mind until stumbling across the first and hardest climb of the circuit whilst riding in Kent last week.
Photo by Ben Ingham
By Johnny Green
“In the city there’s a thousand things I want to say to you
But whenever I approach you, you make me look a fool
I wanna say, I wanna tell you
About the young ideas
But you turn them into fear”
- Paul Weller
The Christmas lights of Covent Garden were twinkling. Bright shop windows were adorned with colour, sharp art for stylish goods of all shapes 'n' shades. It is urgent that there are brands to be pushed, desired product to be flogged. Designer cool mingled with desirable tat. Shoppers bustled 'n' shoved, danced nimble side steps to avoid those absorbed on mobile phones.
The Rapha 500, despite the best of intentions, ended in spookily similar fashion to my alternative and likely programme, as opposed to the idealistic scenario mapped out here.
Every school report I ever had made the same points repeatedly: could do better; must try harder; wasting undoubted talent. My teachers knew a slacker when they saw one. It’s a fair cop. Nothing’s going to change now, but it was fun trying… or sort of trying.
Laying the foundations for the upcoming year by preparing the body with a block of long steady rides, marks the end of the social season and the beginning of the antisocial season.
No more drinks with the boys; every dinner and party invitation cross-referenced with the training diary before acceptance; every available waking hour planned and pre-meditated. The trouble is, real life has a habit of intruding on the best-laid plans. Illness, family and work chip away at those carefully charted rides with increasing frequency until, before you know it, Spring has sprung and it’s all too late.
The 1954 Giro began amidst a great fuss. The war had a devastating effect on Italy’s roads, infrastructure and wider economy, leaving millions of Italians disoccupati, out of work. In Tuscany the Piaggio fighter plane factories had been totally destroyed by allied bombs in 1943. Enrico Piaggio, heir to the family silver, was tasked with rebuilding not only the factory, but with it the wealth of the Piaggio dynasty. Reckoning that what Italians most needed was small, affordable transportation, he had Corradino D'Ascanio, his chief designer, set to work on a clean, cheap two-wheeled vehicle. It had a faring covered engine at the rear, no filthy chain, and space for a passenger. When Piaggio explained that the thing looked like a wasp, D’Ascanio took it as a compliment; ‘There we are then, we’ll call it just that.’ The Vespa went into full production in August 1946, followed in short order by a competitor brand, the Lambretta. This, no less than a transport revolution, saw to it that by the early fifties Italy’s bicycle factories, hitherto sole sponsors of the country’s professional racing teams, found their sales, and by extension their fortunes, somewhat diminished.
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