Sports Poets Society

André Darrigade -- for everyone "the other Dédé" a quarter of a century after the most illustrious Leducq -- was a great sprinter, but also a sort of an Ironman of the Tour de France: from 1953 to 1966 he rode them all, retiring only once, in 1963. But in a kind of way it was also his qualities of speed and endurance to make him enter the old and varied history of The Curse of the Rainbow Jersey. In his case, an even retroactive curse. Indeed, he had already lived his own tragedy well before he even wore it, the "damned" rainbow jersey. During the 24th and last stage of the 1958 Grande Boucle, 320 km (200 mi) from Dijon to Paris, while he was preparing himself to sprint on the glamourous Parco dei Principi ( Princes’ Park ) track, he violently struck against Constant Wouters, the general secretary of the place. Darrigade got up and managed to cross the finish line, but Wouters died at the hospital eleven days later. Born on April 24, 1929 in Narrosse...

21.03.2017 by Hannah Troop “Every year by the last weekend of November I lose my traditional smile and my eyes turn sad while trying to retain the tears from rolling down.” When we received this email late last year from our close friend Sergi Florenciano, we knew that we had to write a story about it. As you continue to read you can feel the eyes start to sting and vision blur slightly. Sergi wrote to us about his fallen comrade, his partner in crime–Issac Galvez. Emotion pours onto the page detailing this tragic narrative, about the lottery that is professional bike racing. “He [Issac] got his second World Track championship, again with his beloved [teammate] Joan Llaneras…they were called to be the next Olympic Champions on Madison, the Kings of the velodrome. So by the fall of 2006 both Isaac and Llaneras put all their energy into the track season.” “They took a break on the first weekend of November to go back home; Isaac got married, we were overjoyed that day....

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?page_id=46895 By Leo Woodland Bergen-op-Zoom, Putte, Antwerp, Temse, Buggenhout, Lebbeke, Aalst New year's day, south on the semi-main road that runs the 25km or so to Belgium. Not a sparkling ride normally but Holland was sleeping in, the streets a wreckage of burned-out fireworks, food wrappers and beer cans from the night before. About halfway to Putte, which straddles the border, I reached Hogerheide. The main road skirts it but the bike route runs through the middle, and I didn't mind that. I fancied a coffee and there was a chance that if I picked the right café and the right company, I could get to talking about the Eagle of Hogerheide. You may not have heard of him. Few people now recall him, which is perhaps as well because it's a sad story of a life ruined at the moment of its glory. Hogerheide in the 1960s was the home of an everyday racing cyclist called Harm Ottenbros. On Sunday, August 10...

http://capovelo.com/harm-ottenbros/ 30 JUN 2015 by Gianni Pericolo   A belated happy birthday to Harm Ottenbros, who was born on June 27, 1943.  The Dutch rider is best known for winning the gold medal and rainbow jersey at the 1969 world cycling championship road race in Zolder, Belgium.  The relatively unknown Ottenbros, managed to edge out Julien Stevens of Belgium by a few centimetres to claim the victory. In addition, Ottenbros accumulated a handful of stage victories in the Tour de Suisse, Tour de Belgium and the Tour de Luxembourg.  However, after winning the World Championship, the world of cycling turned on Ottenbros. Some say they felt, that the unknown rider had no right to cycling’s biggest prize , imposing guilt on Ottenbros for denying the championship to Eddy Merckx . In fact, the only rider to congratulate him was Franco Bitossi, who rode up alongside him in the Tour of Flanders and said he admired what he’d done. The ges...

txt by: Christian Giordano Forever too young, poor Stan – That's what his family used to call him.  Constant (Stan) Ockers was born on February 3rd, 1920 in Borgerhout, a suburb of Antwerp, Belgium. A cycling heaven, if there is such a thing, except for him – Since his childhood dream was to enlist in the Belgian Navy. In order to achieve this, he left school early, however he was too young to join up. As a result of this, he had to start his apprenticeship as a ship-painter on the docks. However, his new and unexpected career did not last too long because his older brother Jos bought him a bike and Stan discovered that he was a natural road rider. At that time, he was playing football, which is not a such good combination with cycling because both use muscles in different ways. For that reason, almost reluctantly, he headed on to the two-wheeled sport. He quickly rose up the amateur ranks and, in 1941, while Belgium was already occupied by the Nazis, he turned p...

«He had some problems, but he was a good bloke.» – Paolo Bettini, former Grabo 's Quick Step teammate words: CHRISTIAN GIORDANO The next Merckx. Another one, the umpteenth of an infinite series. If it all goes wrong, the next Ullrich. At worst, the next Soukhoroutchenkov. Gold medal after a solitary break in the middle of the last lap ahead of the Australian William Walker and the Russian Evgeny Popov and silver medal between the Russian Michail Ignatiev and the New Zealander Peter Latham in the time trial of Casa de Campo at the World Championships in Madrid 2005; twice TT European champion in a row in Moscow 2005 and Valkenburg 2006; first place in the 2006 Tour of the Regions; second place - 5" behind Dario Cataldo - at Giro d'Italia Baby: Dmytro Grabovskyy in the Under 23 ranks was a sure bet, but also one with «a little problem» of which the peloton whispered but did not speak openly. No, it was not about doping, but another evil if possible even more ...

September 08, 2013, 14:12 Introduction This biography is meant to be published on September 8 2013 for the 65th anniversary of Jean-Pierre Monseré 's birth. His pro career being brutally shortened by tragedy it looks as if this biography might be very short, but there was a life before the World title, the "default" Lombardy victory and the tragic crash at the kermess of Retie. Mark Van Hamme already made a great biography in Dutch of the former World Champion called " Jean-Pierre Monseré: voor altijd 22 " (Roularta Books, 2010), one of the best cycling biography that there is, on which this one is mainly based (though information from other sources is added). He was born in a factory worker's house to a poor factory working district of Roeselare that the richer merchants from downtown sarcastically called 'Krottegem'. The district is famous for a bitter beer called Rodenbach (usually drunk with grenadine) and for the impressive number of cyc...