Cyclopedia. Part 10

Merckx had no rivals, only occasional challengers. In the Cla.s.sics ROGER DE VLAEMINCK and Freddy Maertens fought him gallantly, while in the Tour de France the Spaniard Luis Ocana threw down the gauntlet in 1971, finis.h.i.+ng almost nine minutes ahead at the Orcieres-Merlette ski resort in the ALPS. On the next stage, out of the Alps to Ma.r.s.eille, Merckx attacked from the start and rode so fast that the race was half an hour ahead of schedule at the finish.

The Merckx Joke =.

The tale is told that after the death of a cyclist who tried to beat Merckx for years but was constantly frustrated, the pro went to Heaven and was greeted by St. Peter. The saint put him in a race on the smoothest velodrome he had ever seen, on the finest Italian frame. All the greats who had predeceased him were on the start line: COPPI, GARIN, and so on, but he knew he would win. As the line approached, however, he felt a wheel coming past, glanced up, and saw the face of the Cannibal; disconsolate, he went to St. Peter and said, "Eddy isn't dead yet, what's he doing here?" St. Peter replied gravely: "That wasn't Merckx. It was G.o.d. He likes to pretend he's Merckx."

Ocana summed up his rival: "It's not enough for him to win one day, he wants to win the next day and the day after that. Ayrton Senna has the same mentality, he's eaten away by the same thirst for victory. Only the very great have it. Winning for them is second nature. When they don't win any more, they come face to face with a void."

The Cannibal's career began to wane in 1975 when the Frenchman Bernard Thevenet overcame him in the Tour-Merckx crashed along the way and broke a cheekbone but still finished second-and he retired from racing in spring 1978. Until retirement in 2009 he ran a bike factory in Belgium, which was set up with the help of his former bike maker Ugo de Rosa; he also works on ASO's Tour of Qatar. His son Axel raced during the 1990s for teams such as Motorola and Telekom. Merckx grew close to Lance Armstrong when the Texan raced on his bikes while at the Motorola team, and the pair remain friends.

MILANSAN REMO The longest of the one-day CLa.s.sICS and the only one to retain a course that is virtually identical to the one first used in 1907. First come the flat plains south of Milan, then the Apennines via the Turchino pa.s.s, then it's around Genova and along the old Roman Mediterranean coast road through Imperia and Ala.s.sio to San Remo, the last substantial town before the French border.

The race was founded to publicize what was then a fading seaside resort known only for gambling; today it is the first truly major event on the cycling calendar, nicknamed "La Primavera" by the Italians, for whom it symbolizes the arrival of spring with the pa.s.sage from fog and cold in Milan to suns.h.i.+ne on the Riviera. Victory here has been a rite of pa.s.sage for every Italian campione from ALFREDO BINDA to FRANCESCO MOSER.

In its early years, MilanSan Remo was occasionally hit by h.e.l.lish weather. The snowy 1910 edition remains legendary: the winner Eugene Christophe (see MEMORIALS to find out where his broken forks are remembered) might well have died of hypothermia had he not been rescued by a farmer. He warmed up in the farmhouse for half an hour, then set off to complete the 12-hour trek. Only two other riders finished; Christophe then spent a month in the hospital recovering and did not race properly for another two years. Such feats were typical of the HEROIC ERA.

Today, the largely flat course means that in spite of its 190-mile length, MilanSan Remo is essentially a tactical battle that frequently ends in a ma.s.s sprint between the men strong enough to survive the series of short climbs that test their legs in the final 60 kilometers. First comes the Cipressa, a series of steep hairpins through olive groves with a dangerous descent back to the coast, next up are the Capi-little ascents to headlands, Mele, Cervo, Berta-before the final test: the sinuous Poggio.

While FAUSTO COPPI scored several notable solo wins, including a legendary 160-kilometer escape in 1946 that began before the Turchino was crossed, the record holder in San Remo is EDDY MERCKX who won seven times in 11 years. Between 1997 and 2001 the German Erik Zabel achieved a dominance unique in any one-day event in recent years, with four wins out of five. MARK CAVENDISH gave Britain its second win in the event (after TOM SIMPSON in 1964) with his narrow sprint victory in 2009.

MILK RACE One of the longest-lasting race sponsorsh i ps in cycling. This amateur Tour of Britain was first held in 1958 with its roots in a variety of around Britain events run during the 1940s and 1950s, such as BrightonGlasgow and the Circuit of Britain, backed by companies such as Quaker Oats and the Daily Express.

The Milk Race was sponsored by the Milk Marketing Board, a government body responsible for selling milk produced by Welsh and English farmers until the agency was abolished in 1993. It always had a down-home feel to it. The first event was flagged away by the comedian Norman Wisdom and run by the West London official Chas Messenger, who produced famously tough courses. He managed a trans-Pennine stage lasting seven hours in 1962. The Milk Race also has a place in antidoping history: soon after drugs were banned in 1965, tests carried out on the racers resulted in the first three positives in cycling.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Milk Race became one of the biggest amateur stage races in the world, behind the Peace Race (see EASTERN EUROPE to find out more about this one) and the Tour de l'Avenir, run by the Tour de France organizers. It welcomed compet.i.tors from Russia and Poland in spite of the fact that these state-sponsored professional amateurs were usually victorious over the home cyclists who worked full-time and only raced part-time. The Russians won every year from 1977 to 1984, apart from 1978, when a Pole won, and 1983, when the American Matt Eaton won. The era is captured in the doc.u.mentary Manpower. The race tended to visit all areas of England and Wales-but never Scotland.

Malcolm Elliott, winner in 1987, went on to finish the Tour de France that year and briefly became a prolific winner in Europe, while the last winner, in 1993, was Chris Lillywhite riding for the Banana-Falcon pro team. There have been other Tours of Britain. The Butlin Tour was a seven-day event between Butlin's holiday camps in 1951. The Sealink Tour ran through the 1970s, usually including a transfer on the nationalized ferry company, while the Kellogg's Tour was an all-professional event that lasted from 1987 to 1994, and the PruTour, backed by the Prudential financial services company, took place in 1998 and 1999. Since 2004 the Milk Race has had a successor in the Tour of Britain, run by the Sweetspot promotions company and taking place over nine days in September.

MILLAR, Robert Born: Glasgow, Scotland, September 13, 1958 Major wins: Three stages Tour de France; King of the Mountains Tour de France 1984; Giro d'Italia 1987; British national road t.i.tles 19789 (amateur), 1995 (pro); Dauphine Libere stage race 1990 Further reading/viewing: In Search of Robert Millar, Richard Moore, HarperCollins UK, 2008; doc.u.mentary on DVD: The High Life The Glaswegian is Britain's best ever TOUR DE FRANCE cyclist, one of cycling's greatest climbers, and one of the sport's great eccentrics. During the 1992 "Euro-Tour," where the race numbers bore the 12 stars of the European Union, Millar spent several minutes each morning sc.r.a.ping the stars off and carefully inscribing a Scottish saltire instead. He has an acerbic, rather black sense of humor, is a fine writer, coined various NICKNAMES for his contemporaries, and featured in a fine television doc.u.mentary, The High Life, with soundtrack by Steve Winwood.

A double British national amateur champion, Millar was one of the FOREIGN LEGION who turned professional, which he did in 1980 with the PEUGEOT team. Initially overlooked by the management, he became the first Briton to win a major mountain stage of the Tour, at Luchon in 1983, and added a second stage and the King of the Mountains jersey in 1984. His fourth place overall remains a British record, equaled in 2009 by BRADLEY WIGGINS.

In 1985 he would have won the VUELTA A ESPAnA if the home teams had not ganged up on him on the penultimate stage to ensure victory for one of their own, Pedro Delgado, who made a long-range attack on the Scot to overturn a deficit of more than seven minutes. Later, Millar's manager Roland Berland claimed that he had an agreement with the Panasonic team that they would help Millar during the stage if his teammates weren't up to the task; instead, they went back on the deal. Afterward, Delgado thanked the managers of the Spanish teams "for sacrificing their chances for me." Later, in February 1997, Millar a.n.a.lyzed the defeat in Cycle Sport magazine, and made the following comments. He was not informed of who was in front or what the time gap was. His Peugeot team did not have the legs to help him defend the jersey. Berland did not manage to make any deals with other teams to make up for their weakness. His conclusion was "Delgado didn't win, I lost, mainly thanks to some circ.u.mstances that shouldn't have happened."

At the time, it seemed likely Millar would go on to win a major Tour, but it did not happen: Millar added a stage win and second overall in the 1987 Giro, where he took the King of the Mountains prize; he took a third Tour stage in 1989 and won the Dauphine Libere stage race in 1990. A few days after he won the British national champions.h.i.+p in 1995, his career ended abruptly when his sponsor went bust.

Millar wrote a column for the British magazine Cycle Sport for several years, and later wrote bike tests for procycling magazine. His best piece was a feature called "THE KNOWLEDGE," which detailed the dos and don'ts of professional cycling. After retirement he managed the British national road team for a year, then slipped off the radar. He emerged from obscurity in 2009 to write about the 1984 Tour for Rouleur magazine, offered Eurosport insights on the mountains of the Tour de France and gave the Observer newspaper his thoughts on Wiggins.

His younger namesake David, who won the prologue of the Tour in 2000 and a further stage in 2002, is no relation.

MONUMENTS The five greatest one-day events in the sport are often referred to as the "monuments": MilanSan Remo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris...o...b..ix, LiegeBastogneLiege, and the Tour of Lombardy. See their individual entries.

MOORE, James (b. England, 1849, d. 1935) Winner of the first road race held from city to city, ParisRouen, in October 1869. Moore was a vet from Bury St. Edmunds with a practice in Paris when he won what is said to be the first bike race, held over 1,200 m at Paris's Parc St. Cloud on May 31, 1868, with 10 starters. He covered the distance in 3 minutes 50 seconds; the spectators included members of the Parisian aristocracy, according to reports of the time. There were almost certainly races before this but the Parc St. Cloud event was the first for which records exist. According to the historian Benjo Maso, Moore won the second of two events; the French writer Pierre Chany mentions only one "trial of speed" in his history of cycling, however.

Moore had contacts with the Michaux family, who owned a factory where HOBBY HORSES were made. Not surprisingly, he rode one for ParisRouen, although it was one of the few bikes at the time fitted with a revolutionary new invention: ball bearings in the wheels. His time for the 123 km was 10 hours 40 minutes. Amusingly, an initial report in the organizing magazine gave his nationality as "French although his name is English" but Moore wrote in to correct the error.

In 1874 Moore won the McGregor Cup over one mile at Wolverhampton, which unofficially made him world champion. He also served in the French ambulance corps in the Franco-Prussian war and was awarded the Legion d'Honneur.

MOSER, Francesco (b. Italy, 1951) "Il Cecco" is the only cyclist to have won PARIs...o...b..IX three times in a row, but he is better known for bringing cycling into a new era by breaking EDDY MERCKX's HOUR RECORD in Mexico City on January 19, 1984, then improving his distance four days later. Moser was 32 years old and had looked a spent force, but thanks to sponsors.h.i.+p from the sports drinks company Enervit he a.s.sembled a team of 50 technicians to look at every area from AERODYNAMICS to diet and training. They included MICHELE FERRARI, who went on to a controversial career that included helping LANCE ARMSTRONG win seven Tours de France.

The buildup lasted three months; Moser earned 96,000 for breaking the record. Although the record was subsequently discredited when Moser confessed that he had used blood doping-not a practice banned at the time, but one forbidden in later years-it led to huge interest in aerodynamics. Moser used disc wheels, skinsuits, low-profile frame, lycra skinhat and shoe covers, and cow-horn handlebars, all of which became popular. He also gauged his training with a pulse monitor and trained specially with what amounted to weight training on his bike, riding for long periods up moderately steep climbs using high gears.

Aerodynamics, energy drinks, and scientific monitoring are ubiquitous in cycling today, thanks partly to the emphatic way in which Moser broke a record that had been a.s.sumed to be unbeatable. Following the record, Moser appeared rejuvenated and won MILANSAN REMO, then took a controversial win in the GIRO D'ITALIA where it was alleged that the organizers had worked behind the scenes to ensure a home winner.

As well as his record in Paris...o...b..ix-which he finished 12 times between 1974 and 1986, never coming home lower than 13th-Moser was also involved in one of Italian cycling's greatest RIVALRIES, with the 1982 world champion Giuseppe Saronni. He later retired to start a bike company, came briefly out of retirement in 1995 to attempt an hour record using the tuck position invented by GRAEME OBREE, and ran a vineyard in his native Trento.

MOTORPACING Racing on the track behind full-size adapted motorbikes, known as the "big motors," is rarely seen nowadays, but was popular through the golden era of track racing, reaching a peak in the 1920s with what French historian Pierre Chany termed "the speed frenzy," when motorpace specialists would vie to become the fastest man in the world. The speeds reached were terrifying. A season-long duel in 1925 between the Belgian Leon Vanderstuyft and the Frenchman Jean Brunier, one attempt after the other, culminated with Brunier getting past 75 mph (120 kph).

They used specially adapted "stayer" bikes, with small front wheels and straight forks to enable them to get closer to the motorbike-on which the rider stood at the very rear, bolt upright (with long handlebars) to give the maximum amount of shelter. A second seat-post might be fitted between the nose of the saddle and the top tube to counter G-forces pus.h.i.+ng the rider downward and distorting the saddle. A roller attached to the back of the motorbike meant that if the cyclist's front wheel made contact, he would stay upright. These were hugely dangerous events: in one attempt, Vanderstuyft wore seven jerseys for protection if he happened to fall.

Motorpaced was the first event on the track world-champions.h.i.+p program in 1895, and the machines and bikes used today look like throwbacks to the 1920s; spectacular as the discipline is, it is only feasible on larger, often open-air tracks, and there was constant speculation about deals being done between the small group of drivers at the Worlds. It was removed from the champions.h.i.+p after the 1994 Worlds in Palermo, Sicily. The last world motorpaced champion was Carsten Podlesch of Germany.

Smaller motorbikes with pedal a.s.sistance known as DERNYS are used in some track events. Some SIX-DAY RACES and track meets include Derny-paced races, and a single Derny makes the pace for the initial laps in KEIRIN races outside j.a.pan. They are also used by track racers for training, although the Great Britain team tends to use a full-size motorbike to get greater speed.

The BordeauxParis "Derby of the road" was the only CLa.s.sIC to keep up the tradition of both motor- and cycle-pacing. It had cycle-pacing until 1930, after which the riders were paced either by commercially available motorbikes or Dernys for all or part of the distance until the race's demise in 1988. The record for the event's 580-odd kilometers was just under 30 mph (47.610 kph set by Andre Chalmel in 1979).

MOULTON, Dr. Alex, CBE (b. England, 1920) Designer who was the first man to make a fundamental change to cycle design since the invention of the SAFETY BICYCLE, when he launched a small-wheeled machine with full suspension in 1962. From a swinging '60s novelty to go with miniskirts and beehive hairdos, the Moulton cycle is now a design cla.s.sic, although it has never ousted the large-wheeled cycle. That's because for road use conventional 27-inch or 700C wheels with pneumatic tires offer sufficient comfort and durability to make suspension an unnecessary complication.

Moulton worked initially in airplane engineering, then on car suspensions using rubber, and is best known for developing and producing the system used in another iconic 1960s design, the Mini. He took six years to produce his bike, which had a frame shaped like an F lying on its side. The critical factor was the rubber-based suspension, a version of that used on the Mini, enabling the small wheels to be used with high pressure tires so there was no compromise in ride or performance. A princ.i.p.al base tube connected the top of the front fork and the rear drop-out, while two extensions held the saddle and the handlebars.

To convince a sceptical, conservative market that this was a serious machine, Moulton and his marketing manager David Duffield went into sponsors.h.i.+p. A month after its launch, top British time triallist John Woodburn broke the CardiffLondon record on one of the bikes; a team pursuit team proved successful on them-because the small wheels enabled the team to keep closer together, reducing drag-and TOM SIMPSON became a fan when he rode one at the Herne Hill track. With help from the British Motoring Corporation, Moulton rapidly became Britain's second-largest cycle maker behind RALEIGH, selling 1,000 bikes a week by 1965. Other companies produced small-wheel bikes but never really caught up.

Initially Moulton worked with Raleigh to produce bikes aimed at the ma.s.s market; the marriage was an unhappy one and subsequently Sir Alex focused on high-quality, hand-built bikes. In 1983 the AM (Alex Moulton) 7 bike was launched, with the "s.p.a.ce frame" made up of a lattice of small diameter tubes. A Moulton fitted with a fairing to improve AERODYNAMICS was ridden at 51 mph over 200 m, a world record.

Today, the latest Moultons incorporate suspension with rubber springs and adjustable fluid damping and offer two key features: because they are shallow in height they can be used by cyclists of all sizes, and they can be "separated"-divided into several bits-making them easy to fit in a car trunk or a suitcase. The top-of-the-range models are made in Reynolds 531 (see FRAMES-MATERIALS), with adjustable bars, stem, and brake levers. Moulton APBs (all purpose bicycles) are made under licence by bicycle and tricycle makers Pashley in Stratford-on-Avon, while Moultons are also made in j.a.pan.

Moultons have gained a pa.s.sionate worldwide following, many of whom are members of the Moulton Bicycle Club and visit the annual Moulton weekend at the company's headquarters in Bradford-on-Avon. They have been used for long-distance touring rides-their strong small wheels and low center of gravity make them well-adapted for carrying luggage-although they are best loved by commuters.

(SEE WHEELS).

MOUNTAIN-BIKING Sprang up in the US in the late 1970s from various antiestablishment off-road rides, most notably the DOWNHILL races held on the REPACK trail in California. Of the Repack crew, Charlie Kelly started the magazine Fat Tire Flyer, Mike Sinyard produced the groundbreaking Specialized Stumpjumper, and frame-builders Joe Breeze and Tom Ritchey and GARY FISHER all became key figures in mountain-bike mythology.

"Gary was the mechanic, the inventor, and a test rider . . . Charlie was also a test rider, constantly suggesting improvements, tracking down components, then using them until they broke. He was also the chronicler," wrote Richard Grant in his introduction to the 1988 Richard's Mountain-bike Book.

Repack was just one of several underground off-road rides in the US at the time. Another was the annual trek from Crested b.u.t.te to Aspen over Pearl Pa.s.s using an old mining road, while the first recorded cross-country race was held in Marin County in 1977. Many of the bikes used were "clunkers," based on the 1930s cruiser machines made by SCHWINN, scavenged from bike-shop sc.r.a.p heaps and customized with motorbike brake levers, bar-mounted s.h.i.+ft levers, fat tires, and primitive hub brakes. The term "mountain bike" was first used for a company set up by Kelly and Fisher in 1979 to market the machines.

Breeze built an early run of 10 replica "clunkers" for Kelly-with cantilever brakes and Magura motorbike brake levers-but Ritchey made the first ones to enter the market, at $1,300 each, and began using the 26-inch wheels that are now standard. In 1980 Sinyard bought some Ritchey bikes and used them as the basis for the Stumpjumper, which hit the market in 1981. A year later s.h.i.+MANO and SunTour brought out mountain-bike groupsets and by 1984, US mountain-bike sales had hit a million.

The first umbrella body, National Off-Road Bicycle a.s.sociation, was founded in Kelly's house in 1983 and set the early pace for developing off-road racing. At the same time, off-road tourists such as Nicholas Crane (later to present the BBC series Coast) pushed the boundaries and helped boost the profile of the new bikes by taking the machines to places like Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, and the Yukon. Australians Tim Gartside and Peter Murphy crossed the Sahara in 1983.

The general public might not have wanted to ride in those places, but they liked having machines that looked as if they could. Cycling off-road was not new but the notion that doing it made you part of a movement was a novelty, and it was jumped upon rapidly by well-marketed companies such as Muddy Fox, who pushed their product hard in the British market.

In 1987 there were two world champions.h.i.+ps run by rival governing bodies, one in the Alps at Villard de Lans, one in the US at Mammoth, California. The UCI sanctioned mountain-biking in 1990 and the first official WORLD CHAMPIONs.h.i.+PS took place at Durango, with Ned Overend and Juli Furtado of the US winning the cross-country events. The first UCI-sanctioned World Cup series, sponsored by Grundig, was run in 1991.

In the early 1990s, the Americans who had founded the sport began to be matched by European cyclists such as Henrik Djernis of Denmark and Thomas Frischknecht of Switzerland who had transferred from CYCLO-CROSS. Early British stars were also 'cross riders such as David Baker and Tim Gould, who formed a strong partners.h.i.+p for PEUGEOT.

During the 1990s stage races became popular, with the TOUR DE FRANCE organizers experimenting with a mountain-bike Tour in which the riders and caravan slept out in tents. France's Fred Monca.s.sin became the only man to win stages in the mountain-bike and road Tours. A VUELTA A ESPAnA was also run, and a Tour of Switzerland. In Australia, the Crocodile Trophy was born, with 17 stages averaging 150 km in length. In 1996, cross-country was accepted into the OLYMPIC GAMES with Paola Pezzo and Bart Brentjens the first champions. The blond-haired Pezzo, heavily marketed by Cannondale, gave the sport a glamour side.

By then, mountain-bike sales had outstripped road-bike sales in the US and UK and the arrival of the fat-tire bikes had led to a complete change in the cycling marketplace, introducing vast numbers of new people to bike riding. It also radically restructured the market, bringing technical innovation in its wake that eventually transferred into road racing. Helmets were quickly made compulsory in mountain-biking and were improved rapidly as a result, making them acceptable to road racers.

There was almost constant technical development as s.h.i.+mano and SunTour experimented with componentry and conditioned the market to expect annual upgrades. All the while manufacturers vied to produce the s.e.xiest suspension bikes. Oversize aluminium became popular thanks to makers like Klein and Cannondale, while suspension came in from the early 1990s. The 1990 men's world champions.h.i.+p was won using front suspension, and Rockshox's provision of forks to GREG LEMOND and company in PARIs...o...b..IX from 1991 onward created a useful buzz.

Mountain-biking sp.a.w.ned a number of off-shoots to go with the original cross-country and downhill. Enduros are run along the same lines as CYCLOSPORTIVES, which actually drew on early mountain-bike cross-country races for inspiration. Mountain-bike orienteering has a hard-core following while trials contests are centerd on the central notion of mountain-biking-that you have to get over, around, up and down obstacles you wouldn't dare tackle on a road bike.

(SEE CYCLO-CROSS AND ROUGH STUFF FOR OTHER WAYS OF CYCLING OFF-ROAD).

MURPHY, Charles (b. New York, 1871, d. 1950) Charles "Mile a Minute" Murphy was the first man in history to go faster than 60 mph using human muscle power. He covered a measured mile in 57.8 seconds at Maywood, Long Island, on June 30, 1899, and epitomized an era when cyclists were pus.h.i.+ng the limits of human propulsion with whatever pacing a.s.sistance could be devised. A flamboyant track racer, Murphy would appear at events dressed in a racing suit based on the US flag, with a huge eagle on the chest. Murphy set his record behind a steam railway engine pulling a coach with a boarded enclosure at the back to shelter him; two and a half miles of planks were laid between the railway tracks to take the bike. Initially the engine could not go fast enough and, in spite of the adaptations to the coach, Murphy was constantly battered by turbulence during the minute he spent at 60 mph and weaved from side to side, almost losing control of his bike as the boards undulated due to the weight of the engine. He was splattered with dust, cinders, and burning rubber from under the carriage.

At the end of the mile, the train slowed down; Murphy couldn't. He slammed into the back of the coach and was dragged on board with his bike still attached to his feet. The sight terrified the several thousand onlookers including his wife and children.

Murphy went on to a successful professional career, claiming seven world records by 1895, and became a policeman when his racing days ended.

N.

NICKNAMES Not surprisingly in a sport created by JOURNALISTS, from the very earliest days it has been the press rather than the fans who have tended to give cyclists their nicknames in order to dramatize a sport in which much of the action can be a little monotonous. Tour founder HENRI DESGRANGE and his sidekick Geo Lefevre are the founding fathers here too: their dispatches in L'Auto refer to cyclists as "the Furniture Makers" champion," the "Prince of the Miners," or the "White Bulldog." (For why MAURICE GARIN, winner of the first TOUR DE FRANCE, was nicknamed "the Little Chimney Sweep," see his entry.) The most famous nickname of all was given to EDDY MERCKX: "the Cannibal" was coined in 1971 by the daughter of a frustrated Frenchman, Christian Raymond, after the Belgian won a stage in the Midi Libre race by half an hour. In the 1980s, SEAN KELLY was nicknamed "the New Cannibal" while JEANNIE LONGO is "the Lady Cannibal."

The lexicon of cycling beasts is endless: the Spaniard Vicente Trueba was "the Flea," because of the way he jumped in the mountains. BERNARD HINAULT said that he was called "the Badger" because the beast fights hard when it is cornered. Laurent Jalabert never really liked being known as "the Panda," because of the dark circles around his eyes, while Joop Zoetemelk was referred to as "the Rat," because he allegedly did not contribute in races. Climbing "eagles" such as FEDERICO BAHAMONTES and Ferdi Kubler are numerous, so too valiant "lions" such as Fiorenzo Magni, while Jan Ullrich was known as "Der Uhle," the Owl, a wordplay on an abbreviation of his surname: Ulli. The British Olympic medalist Geraint Thomas has been called "the Penguin," because, said David Millar, he resembles the characters from the film Madagascar: cute on the outside, ruthless inside. (Millar was nicknamed "Boy Dave" until he fell foul of a DOPING scandal in 2004.) The French call any Australian cyclist "le Kangourou."

There have been several "eternal seconds," riders more famous for never quite managing to win: Zoetemelk was one, RAYMOND POULIDOR another. The diminutive is common-Perico for Pedro Delgado, Poupou for Poulidor-but on the other hand "Big Mig," the nickname for MIGUEL INDURAIN, was invented by British journalists when asked by an American colleague for a translation of his Spanish monicker Miguelon. The author can claim credit for the "Tashkent Terror," as the Uzbek sprinter DJAMOLIDIN ABDUZHAPAROV was known; he was also called "the Terminator," for the way Abdu' kept falling down and getting up again.

Some nicknames just happen: no one knows who first called SEAN YATES "Tonk" or "Horse" although the sense is obvious. British journalists referred to French climber Richard Virenque as "Tricky d.i.c.ky"-when he was being evasive about the Festina drug scandal-and also "Spotted d.i.c.k," a reference to the red and white Tour climber's jersey.

Some cyclists have coined their own nicknames for marketing purposes. Tour climber Claudio Chiappucci was the first, calling himself "il Diablo." MARCO PANTANI was first known as "Elefantino"-Dumbo-because of his big ears, and also "Nosferatu" because of his emaciated face, but sold himself as "Il Pirata," because of his seaside roots, and created a line of bandanas, saddles, and other accessories with a skull and crossbones motif; his 1999 team launch featured a vast mock-up of a pirate s.h.i.+p. With the help of a shoe company, sprinter Mario Cipollini went through many incarnations: for instance "the Sun King," "il Magnifico." He was also referred to as "SuperMario" and as "Moussolini," for his hair gel.

Nicknames are less prevalent in women's cycling, but the dominant force, Jeannie Longo, has been called "Ma Dalton," after the ferocious old lady created by the cartoonist Goscinny; her great rival Maria Canins was rather patronizingly known (probably by male writers) as "La Mamma Volante"-the flying mother.

Other great nicknames: "the Cycling Brummel" (1935 world champion Jean Aerts), "The Pious One" (GINO BARTALI), "the Mason of Friuli" (Ottavio Bottecchia, 19245 Tour de France winner), "le Pedaleur de Charme" (Hugo Koblet), and "Major Tom" (TOM SIMPSON). "The Professor" was LAURENT FIGNON, 19834 Tour winner; the "Gypsy" or "Beast of Eeklo" four-time Paris...o...b..ix winner ROGER DE VLAEMINCK.

NUDE CYCLING First depicted, perhaps, in an 18th-century English church window and popular in turn-of-the-century French POSTERS, cycling with nothing on has gone from a fringe activity to a way of garnering publicity and money. The rock band Queen gathered a bevy of naked models on bikes at the Crystal Palace cycling circuit to shoot the cover for their song "Bicycle Race" in 1978; 24 years later the photoshoot was recreated with 18 models on BMX bikes to promote a computer game.

LANCE ARMSTRONG brought nudity into the mainstream by posing naked-side on-on his bike for Annie Leibovitz for the magazine Vanity Fair in 1999. Armstrong's pose was copied by the British OLYMPIC team sprinter Victoria Pendleton-said to be wearing flesh-colored underwear-for the magazine Observer Sport Monthly in 2008. Apparently her dentist disapproved, but her parents were happy with the picture. Later, Pendleton's fellow Beijing gold-medalist Rebecca Romero was depicted wearing only gold body paint in a sports drink advertis.e.m.e.nt that made it into the British tabloid press.

More seriously, naked cycling is now a form of protest, with the annual world naked bike ride (www.worldnakedbikeride.org) against car culture and climate change taking place in 60 countries, including the US, Britain, Canada, Spain, and Germany. The extent of undress is up to the partic.i.p.ants and includes various forms of body-painting but nudity is here used as a metaphor to express the vulnerability of cyclists in traffic.

In reference to the CRITICAL Ma.s.s RIDES in protest at traffic conditions, there are also naked rides called Critical a.s.s and Critical t.i.ts. At the British event in Brighton one March, the temperature meant the ride had to be brief and the partic.i.p.ants wore woolly hats and gloves. In June 2009, 700 rode in the event, then went skinny-dipping in the sea.

O.

OBREE, Graeme Born: Ayrs.h.i.+re, Scotland, September 11, 1965 Major wins: World pursuit champion 1993, 1995; world Hour Records 1993, 1994 Nickname: the Flying Scotsman Further reading/viewing: Flying Scotsman, Graeme Obree, Velo Press, 2005; DVD Battle of the Bikes In July 1993 a leading Italian journalist heard that a Scottish amateur on a homemade bike was making a largely self-financed attempt to break the fearsome HOUR RECORD held by the legendary Italian FRANCESCO MOSER. The nine-year-old record was considered definitive and cycling greats such as BERNARD HINAULT and GREG LEMOND felt it was too hard for them. The writer scoffed and said that if Graeme Obree beat Moser he would retire and return to his mamma's farm to eat pasta.

But in one of cycling's most improbable rises to fame, if not exactly fortune, Obree not only bettered Moser's distance on the velodrome at Hamar, Norway, but did so at his second attempt on the record within 48 hours. Conventional wisdom has it that it is impossible to recover from an effort such as this overnight, but Obree kept his legs from stiffening up by drinking copious amounts of water so he had to wake up to urinate. Each time he woke, he did stretching exercises to ease his muscles.

He followed that up with a world champions.h.i.+p in the individual pursuit, beating the Olympic champion CHRIS BOARDMAN, and he added a second world t.i.tle in 1995. He later wrote a detailed account of his severe depression and suicide attempts.

Obree is a policeman's son from Ayrs.h.i.+re who was drawn to cycling partly to escape being bullied at school, and he has always had an unconventional approach to the sport. He turned up at his first race, a time trial, wearing Dr. Martens shoes and stopped before the finish because he a.s.sumed the race ended where it had began. By the early 1990s, his RIVALRY with Boardman had become intense, as much due to the contrast between the pair as what happened on the road. It was captured in a television doc.u.mentary, Battle of the Bikes. Obree built his own bikes and lived off a diet of sliced white bread, marmelade, and cornflakes. At one point in his life, when his phone was cut off, he could only be reached by calling the pay phone on the street where he lived.

The key to Obree's success was his hunch that a radical "tucked-in" aerodynamic position would make him faster (see AERODYNAMICS). "I got the hacksaw out, turned the bars up, cut the extra off and that was me. I hadn't been riding much, but I did a personal best." In 1989 he won 26 time trials and took the British hour record. Much of his training was done on an adapted home trainer with a leather belt-"like for round your waist"-to control resistance.

The machine he designed to beat Moser's hour record had an F-shaped frame like a MOULTON folding bike, a narrow bottom bracket to keep his feet close together, and high handlebars so that his arms could be bent up underneath his chest. To get the bike narrow, he incorporated a was.h.i.+ng-machine bearing, not because it was all he could afford, but because it was the perfect size. Riding on the Bordeaux velodrome, Boardman bettered Obree's distance a week after the Scot beat Moser's distance, but Obree returned the following April to regain the record. Five months later, the quintuple Tour winner MIGUEL INDURAIN went even faster.

Obree's sporting success and easygoing manner hid the fact that he was mentally ill. His successes, he said, came from a terror of failing. He was driven, he said, by "a need to win to feel worthwhile enough to go about the daily business of life." Obree made several attempts to kill himself before he was eventually diagnosed as manic depressive with a personality disorder. His record and world champions.h.i.+p had been "a life shock" he said later, taking him from hunting for pennies down the back of his sofa to contracts worth thousands of dollars. "I was just swept along. Cycling was a party trick and I liked the reaction."

The radical position adopted by Obree challenged conventional thinking, which was that the diamond frame adopted in the late 19th century was the most efficient form for cyclists: other cyclists tried the tuck, including Moser, who made a comeback in order to prove that only the position had enabled Obree to beat his distance. The cycling authorities felt that too much attention was being paid to aerodynamics and banned the tuck a few minutes before Obree defended his pursuit t.i.tle in 1994.

After being prevented from riding that year, Obree responded by creating a new position nicknamed "Superman," in which his arms pointed straight forward, and he used it to win the 1995 world pursuit t.i.tle. Superman was used by the Italian team to dominate the 1996 Olympic Games track events, while Boardman set a definitive Hour Record using it later that year. The position was ruled illegal at the end of 1996, and Obree retired from cycling, although he returned in 2006 to take the team prize in the Scottish 10-mile time trial champions.h.i.+p. A FILM ent.i.tled the Flying Scotsman was made of his life story starring Johnny Lee Miller. In February 2011 Obree again made headlines with his revelation that he is h.o.m.os.e.xual, which made him the first high-profile male cyclist to come out.

OCHOWICZ, Jim (b. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1951) A mainstay of US road racing for 30 years, and a legendary team manager, Ochowicz began his cycling career as a track racer, competing in the team pursuit at the 1972 and 1976 summer Olympics. He was one of the founders of the 7-Eleven cycling team in 1981 and managed the squad when it successfully transferred to European racing in 1985, becoming the first US team to start the Tour the following year. The squad included stars of US cycling such as Davis Phinney and Andy Hampsten, who gave the United States their first victory in the 1988 Giro d'Italia. In 1990, Ochowicz's team led the TOUR DE FRANCE for nine stages with the Canadian STEVE BAUER. When 7-Eleven ceased sponsors.h.i.+p at the end of 1990, Ochowicz obtained backing from the Motorola corporation. The team initially relied on the Australian veteran Phil Anderson and was then built around a rising star: Lance Armstrong. Motorola ceased sponsors.h.i.+p at the end of 1996, and Ochowicz became a stockbroker working with Thomas Weisl, owner of the US Postal Service team. He maintained his links with professional cycling by managing the US national team at the world road race champions.h.i.+ps and served as president of US Cycling from 2002 to 2006. In 2007 he began working with the Swiss squad BMC, the connection being that Ochowicz helped secure sponsors.h.i.+p for the team's precursor Phonak with the iShares company, only for the deal to fall through when Phonak leader Floyd Landis tested positive. Ochowicz helped guide BMC to ProTour status in 2010. He is married to the former track cyclist and Olympic speed skater Sheila Young.

OLYMPIC GAMES Cycling was included in the Olympics when they were founded in 1896 by Baron de Coubertin and has been in every Games since, apart from 1904 when there were no official events. For 100 years, however, the Olympics carried less weight in the cycling world than the TOUR DE FRANCE or road-race WORLD CHAMPIONs.h.i.+P. The professional elite were unable to compete so the Games were seen as, at best, a stepping stone to a pro career. As a result, prior to 1996, very few of cycling's top names figured in the results: for example, the only "amateur" Games medalist to win a Tour de France is Joop Zoetemelk of Holland.

The program has undergone numerous changes. Women's cycling was a disgracefully late inclusion in the Games, given that women were brought into the world road-race champions.h.i.+ps in 1958. It was another 26 years before the Games recognized women's cyclists, with Connie Carpenter winning the inaugural road race in Los Angeles. In track racing, the women's sprint did not figure until 1988, and the pursuit in 1992, and women remained hard done by well into the 21st century, with only one event for female sprinters compared to three for the men.

The most significant recent change occurred in 1996 in Atlanta, when "open" cycling events were held, with the best professionals permitted to compete. That was achieved by removing the distinction between the amateur and pro sides of the sport; in that year, the road time trial was also introduced, and MIGUEL INDURAIN's victory symbolized the arrival at the Games of the biggest names in cycling. In the same year, the MOUNTAIN-BIKE cross-country was brought in.

BMX was made an Olympic sport in 2008, but this happened amid huge controversy, as the kilometer time trial-an event dating back to the 1896 Games-was dropped in spite of intense opposition. More hot debate looked to be in store running up to 2012, as radical alterations were made to the track program to achieve parity for men and women Olympians.

United States Olympic Medals =.

Paris, 1900 bronze: John Henry Lake, sprint St. Louis, 1904 only US cyclists competed in all seven cycling events, thus winning 21 medals. Marcus Hurley won four gold medals and a bronze; Burton Downing won two golds, three silvers, and a bronze.

Stockholm, 1912 bronze: road-race team; Carl Schutte, road race Los Angeles, 1984 gold: Mark Gorski, sprint; Steve Hegg, pursuit; Alexi Grewal, road race; Connie Carpenter, women's road race silver: Nelson Vails, sprint; Rebecca Twigg, women's road race bronze: Leonard Harvey Nitz, pursuit; time-trial team Seoul, 1988 bronze: Connie Young, women's sprint Barcelona, 1992 bronze: Erin Hartwell, kilometer; Rebecca Twigg, women's pursuit Atlanta, 1996 silver: Marty Nothstein, sprint; Erin Hartwell, kilometer; Susan DeMattei, women's cross-country Sydney, 2000 gold: Marty Nothstein, sprint silver: Mari Holden, women's individual time trial bronze: Lance Armstrong, individual time trial Athens, 2004 gold: Tyler Hamilton, individual time trial silver: Deirdre Demet-Barry, women's individual time trial bronze: Bobby Julich, individual time trial Beijing, 2008 gold: Kristin Armstrong, women's individual time trail silver: Mike Day, BMX bronze: Levi Leipheimer, individual time trial; Donny Robinson, BMX; Jill Kintner, women's BMX Three events with longstanding traditions, the pursuit, points race, and Madison, were removed. They were replaced by a new event, the omnium, a six-event "pentathlon" style event combining a kilometer time trial, 250 m flying start time trial, points, scratch, "devil take the hindmost," and pursuit. The women sprinters were set to gain two events, the team sprint and KEIRIN, gaining parity with their male counterparts.

(SEE TRACK RACING FOR MORE ON THESE DISCIPLINES.).

OPPERMAN, Sir Hubert Born:Rochester, Australia, May 29, 1904 Died: Knox, Australia, April 24, 1996 Major wins: Australian champion 1924, 19267, 1929; ParisBrestParis 1931; OBE 1952, knighted 1980 Nickname: Oppy One of AUSTRALIA's greatest sportsmen in any arena, "Oppy" was a pioneer who won hearts and minds in Europe in the 1920s then went on to a successful career in POLITICS after the Second World War. Opperman was a butcher's son who delivered telegrams on his bike, played Australian Rules Football and cricket at school, and was picked up at the age of 17 by Malvern Star Cycles. Opperman won four Australian road champions.h.i.+ps for the bike company, and his name was always to be a.s.sociated with them. Through Malvern boss Bruce Small, who would remain his manager throughout his cycling career, he was introduced to Don Kirkham, one of two Australians to finish the 1914 TOUR DE FRANCE (the other being Iddo "Snowy" Munro). The 18-year-old Oppy soaked up Kirkham's tales of racing in Europe and set off in 1928 for his own campaign that would include the Tour de France, paid for in part by a fundraising campaign in three newspapers in Australia and New Zealand. In the Tour, Opperman and his three teammates were at a huge disadvantage: most of the stages were TEAM TIME TRIALS in which they would struggle against 10-man squads while having to finish within each day's time limit. They also faced language difficulties: their manager was French and the race organizers would not permit him to talk to their translator, the journalist Rene de Latour, who wrote of "poor lonely Opperman being caught day after day by the various teams of ten super athletes, swopping their pace beautifully." Even so, Opperman rode into Paris 18th overall, over eight and a half hours behind the winner Nicolas Frantz of Luxembourg. He was immediately invited to ride the Bol d'Or 24-hour race at the Buffalo velodrome in Paris, a nonstop event in which the stars were a.s.sisted by teams of pacers. There were two attempts to sabotage his bike by sawing through the chain, but his team manager found a heavy subst.i.tute machine to enable Oppy to win. He was warmly applauded for his ability to urinate while riding. He completed 909 km (565 miles) and was persuaded to keep going for another 79 minutes to add the world 1,000-kilometer record. So popular were his feats in France that he was voted athlete of the year by the readers of L'Auto, the paper that ran the Tour.

In 1931, he returned for a second attempt at the Tour, finis.h.i.+ng 12th, but, more significantly, he managed to win PARISBRESTPARIS, the first victory by a non-European in the toughest CLa.s.sIC of the time. The race was run in rain and headwinds, but the biggest obstacle was simply staying awake through two nights on the road. Here Opperman admitted that he was helped by his experiences racing ma.s.sive distances in Australian events such as SydneyMelbourne: he banged his head with his hands, sang tunelessly every few minutes, and swallowed the coffee, tea, soup, and chops provided by Small. Incredibly, the 49-hour race came down to a five-man sprint on the Versailles velodrome, where Opperman won by 10 lengths.

In 1934, Opperman moved to Britain for a road-record campaign, sponsored by BSA, who were linked to Malvern. He broke five distance records in a fortnight, including the END TO END from Land's EndJohn O'Groats in 1934. He broke virtually every record on the books in Australia, setting a FreemantleSydney time of 13 days, 11 hours, 52 minutes, and closing his career by smas.h.i.+ng 100 records in a 24-hour attempt in Sydney.

After serving in the war in the Royal Australian Air Force, he entered the Australian Parliament and was, variously, minister for transport, minister for immigration, and high commissioner to Malta. He continued cycling until the age of 90, and was actually on an exercise bike when he died.

P.

PANTANI, Marco Born:Cesena, Italy, January 13, 1970 Died: Rimini, Italy, February 14, 2004 Major wins: Tour de France and Giro d'Italia 1998, eight stage wins in each; second, 1997 Tour; third, 1994 Tour; second, 1994 Giro; bronze medal, 1995 world road champions.h.i.+ps Nicknames: Dumbo, the Little Elephant, Nosferatu, the Pirate, and Pac-man-because of the way he would gobble up rivals one by one en route to a mountaintop finish Reading: The Death of Marco Pantani, Matt Rendell, Phoenix, 2007 The charismatic and deeply troubled Italian was one of professional cycling's most celebrated climbing talents and one of its most distinctive stars thanks to his shaven head and big ears. He was one of a small minority to achieve the DOUBLE of wins in the GIRO D'ITALIA and TOUR DE FRANCE in the same year, but died a tragic death and came to epitomize the drug problems of the sport in the 1990s and beyond.

Pantani emerged as a professional in the 1994 Giro, taking second to Evgeni Berzin and showing MIGUEL INDURAIN a clean pair of heels in the mountains. In the 1994 Tour de France it was impossible to ignore him: he made dramatic attacks, fell off every now and then, and finished third. Every mountain inspired the same thought: when would Pantani make his move, and what would happen?

In 1995 he won two Tour stages, but suffered a horrific collision with a 4 4 while descending in the Milan-Turin; it was widely a.s.sumed that the compound fracture of his right s.h.i.+n had ended his career. In April 1996 it had healed to a ma.s.sive lump, with livid scars where the pins had been put in to stabilize the fracture. At that point he could only pedal a low gear, to avoid putting pressure on the leg.

By July 1997 he had recovered sufficiently to win two mountain stages of the Tour and take second overall. His wins in the 1998 Giro d'Italia and Tour were inspiring after the DOPING scandal that hit the 1998 Tour. The legendary double put him on a level with the greats of cycling; overnight he became Italy's biggest sports star, with earnings estimated at 2 million a year. But his downfall came suddenly in June 1999 when he was thrown off the Giro d'Italia, at a point where a crus.h.i.+ng victory was seemingly a.s.sured, for failing a blood test that indicated possible use of EPO. He was embittered for the rest of his life by the incident; he was convinced he had been unfairly targeted and could not believe the way that the cycling milieu turned its back on him.

Subsequently, officials found evidence he had used EPO; he was later banned for the use of insulin, found in a syringe when police raided the Giro. In 2000 he returned to cycling to complete the Giro-after a papal reception in the Vatican-and won the Mont Ventoux stage of the Tour, but during his spell in limbo he had acquired a cocaine habit that dogged him to his retirement in 2003 and beyond. "I'm fighting simply to get back my peace of mind and my love of the bike," he said early that year. When he was found dead of a heart attack in a hotel in Rimini on Valentine's Day 2004 he was an addict whose friends had made numerous, fruitless attempts to clean him up.

Pantani's death has inspired a charitable foundation and an elaborate mausoleum in his home town, where his statue stands on the main square. There are also roadside MEMORIALS to recall some of his greatest exploits: on the Mortirolo and Fauniera pa.s.ses in Italy and at the Deux Alpes ski resort in France. Two major CYCLOSPORTIVES, the Nove Colli and the Marco Pantani, go over climbs a.s.sociated with him.

(SEE ALSO ITALY, DRUGS).

PARALYMPIC CYCLING Brought in as an Olympic sport in Seoul in 1988-for road events only-with the first track events in Atlanta in 1996. The UCI recognizes three categories of event in Disability Cycling: Blind and Partially Sighted (VI or B/VI), Cerebral Palsy (CP), and Locomotor (LC). Riders are a.s.sessed before their category is allotted. VI riders race on the back of a tandem with a fully sighted pilot. Races include flying 200 m, match sprint, kilometer time trial, and pursuit.