Sports Poets Society

https://cyclopunk.blogspot.com/2013/11/daily-cycling-facts-06112013.html Wednesday, 6 November 2013 Frank Vandenbroucke Born in Mouscron, Belgium on this day in 1974, Frank Vandenbroucke - known as VDB - was one of the bad boys of professional cycling, but initially a charming and colourful one who was supported by legions of adoring fans. Sadly, that likable personality, along with the enormous talent he demonstrated early in his sporting career, would be destroyed by a succession of emotional and drug problems, and he died a tragic and early death. Aged four, Frank was hit by a car while riding his bike in the village of Ploegsteert and suffered injuries serious enough to require four operations and to give him problems for the rest of his life, yet his mother remembered years later how he hadn't cried until a doctor cut his beloved cycling shorts in order to be able to examine his leg. As a teenager, he tried athletics and showed talent, winning a regional schoolboy's champi