Robbie McEwen calls it quits

(Originally published in the May 27 to June 2, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle ---

a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines ---

by Sly L. Quintos, Associate Editor.)

AFTER 17 years of getting paid to race a bicycle, Australian Robbie McEwen bowed out of competitive bicycle racing at the conclusion of the Amgen Tour of California last week to pursue a coaching career.

With his retirement, Australia lost one of its role models and a void has been created that will be extremely difficult to fill.

As a triple winner of the Tour de France's Green Jersey sprinters' classification, he was, at his peak, considered one of the fastest sprinters in the world.

Born in Brisbane, Queensland on June 24, 1972, the former Junior Australian BMX Champion McEwen started road cycling in 1992 at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. The first signs of his sprinting prowess on the international stage were at the “Peace Race”, winning three stages for the Australian National team.

He competed in the road race at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, USA where he finished 23rd and at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney where he finished 19th. He was also included on the Australian team for the 1994 Union Cycliste Internationalé or UCI (English: International Cycling Union) Road Cycling World Championships in Italy and in 2002 in Belgium where he won a silver medal. He was again selected for Australian road race team at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. He was named 2002 Australian Cyclist of the Year, 2002 Male Road Cyclist of the Year and 1999 Australia Male Road Cyclist of the Year.

McEwen has participated in the Tour de France 12 times between 1991 and 2010 (except in 2001 and 2009). He logged 12 stage wins in the Tour de France to eclipse Italians Gino Bartali (1936, 1937 and 1946 Tour de France champion) and Mario Cippolini who won the fastest massed-start stage in the 1999 Tour de France (194.5 km) at 50.4 kph, sprinter Eric Zabel of Germany, and Spaniard Migue Indurain (five-time Tour de France champion). Belgian Eddy Merckx (who won the Tour de France five times) holds the title of most Tour de France stage wins at 34.

McEwen’s 2007 Tour de France Stage 1 sprint win was seen as remarkable as he had crashed with 20 km to go. He landed on his wrist and elbow but with the help of his team he clawed his way back to the bunch to win the sprint by over a bike length. The injuries he sustained from the crash did not prevent him from continuing but eventually he was forced out of the race when the Tour entered the Mountains and he failed to finish stage eight within the time limit.

In 2002, McEwen became the first Australian to win the Green Jersey Overall Points (or Sprint) Classification of the Tour de France. By 2006, McEwen had won the sprinters’ green jersey points competition three times in the Tour de France (in 2002, 2004 and again in 2006) defeating rivals such as fellow Australians Baden Cooke and Stuart O’Grady, and international competitors like the German legend Erik Zabel and Thor Hushovd of Norway.

McEwen's first win in 2002 saw him take the green jersey from Zabel, with O’Grady third and Cooke fourth. In 2003, Cooke won the green jersey with McEwen second, Zabel third and O’Grady seventh.

In 2004, McEwen won the green jersey for a second time, defeating Hushovd and Erik Zabel, with O'Grady 4th and Cooke 12th. McEwen had fractured two vertebrae early in the Tour and had ridden the race in pain, but despite this, three days after the Tour de France he came second to Lance Armstrong in a criterium in the Netherlands.

In 2005, McEwen came in third, behind Hushovd and O’Grady. McEwen won his third and final green jersey in 2006, this time with Zabel second and Hushovd third. McEwen was out of the top ten in 2007, placed eighth in 2008 and missed the Tour de France due to injury in 2009.*

A Sad Legacy

(Originally published in the May 13 to 19, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle ---

a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines ---

by Sly L. Quintos, Associate Editor.)

ON July 13 nearly 45 years ago, the 22-stage 4,780-kilometer 1967 edition of Tour de France took a tragic twist when Englishman Tommy Simpson died climbing Mt. Ventoux --- the 6,000-foot “Giant Provence”.

An autopsy found in his fit but dead body large amounts of amphetamine and alcohol --- a diuretic combination which proved fatal when combined in the heat. The combination is also known to cause severe stomach complaints.

“Ventoux is an exceptionally steep climb,” Tour de France journalist Owen Mulholland recalled.

“On the day of Simpson’s death, southern France was locked in a heat wave. Simpson was in the lead group and seemed to be going well. Then, suddenly, he drifted backwards. He began weaving an erratic line between the walls of spectators and collapsed. Friendly hands picked him up and he uttered his last ever words: ‘Put me back on my bike’. In a kilometer, he again toppled from his bike, never to recover consciousness,” Mulholland wrote in chilling details and clinical accuracy.

In the Tour de France the previous year, five-time Tour de France champion Jacques Anquetil led a riders strike against attempts to impose mandatory drug testing. “The Tour is too difficult,” he argued. “You can’t win on mineral water (alone)”.

In such an atmosphere, “there can be little wonder that Simpson, too indulged in substances which, as a result of his death, are banned today,” Mulholland wrote further. “Bicycle racing is inherently risky. Death and permanent injury lurk around every bend. Still, it’s hard to fathom what drives a person to take a chance on using life-threatening drugs for the sake of something as fleeting as athletic performance. Is it, as Anquetil (who died of cancer in his 50s) says, a necessary part of the game? Simpson must have thought so.”

Born on November 30, 1937, Simpson is considered the most successful English road racing cyclist of the post-War years.

Turning professional in 1959, Simpson left England to test his talents in the more fertile fields of France and started winning races --- including the “big ones” such as the 1961 Tour de Flanders in Belgium (a one-day race established in 1913), the one-day 300-kilometer 1964 Spring Classic Milan-San Remo (established in 1907) and the 1965 edition of the Tour of Lombardy (also a one-day race established in 1905).

Simpson is also the first Englishman to win the mass-start Union Cycliste Iternationale (UCI) Road World Championships, often referred to as the World Cycling Championships, held in September 1965 in Lasarte-Oria in Spain (a feat matched only by Mark Cavendish last year). For winning the UCI Road World Championships Road Race, Simpson is considered as the World Cycling Champion (or World Road Cycling Champion) and earned the right to wear the Rainbow Jersey for a full year in road race or stage events he may join.

In addition, Simpson also won the 1967 Paris-Nice “The Race to the Sun” (established in 1933) classic and two stage wins at the three-week Vuelta a España (established in 1935).

“For most of us, it can be difficult to see Simpson’s demise as anything other than the unfortunate death of an overly zealous bike nut. But in those days professional cyclists, with the exception of Tour de France winners, were not well-paid,” Mulholland wrote. “Winners and losers suffered the same, but only the winners made enough to retire on. Simpson’s choice was to win the Tour de France or retire to some ignominious jab back home.”

According to Mulholland, “Simpson’s death was enough to cause the official banning of dangerous drugs and to institute the ongoing testing that disqualified Abdoujaparov in this year’s Tour (de France). Other pros suspected of using EPO (erythropoietin) were disqualified earlier this year in the Tour of Italy and elsewhere.”

Erythropoietin, or its alternatives erythropoetin or erthropoyetin is a glycoprotein hormone that controls erythropoiesis or red blood cell production. It is a cytokine (protein signaling molecule) for erythrocyte (red blood cell) precursors in the bone marrow. Also called hematopoietin or hemopoietin, it is produced by interstitial fibroblasts in the kidney in close association with peritubular capillary and tubular epithelial cells. It is also produced in perisinusoidal cells in the liver. While liver production predominates in the fetal and perinatal period, renal production is predominant during adulthood. Erythropoietin is the hormone that regulates red blood cell production. It also has other known biological functions. For example, erythropoietin plays an important role in the brain's response to neuronal injury. EPO is also involved in the wound healing process.

When exogenous EPO is used as a performance-enhancing drug, it is classified as an erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA). Exogenous EPO can often be detected in blood, due to slight difference from the endogenous protein, for example in features of post-translational modification.

“But as long as pro cyclists suffer for success and the monetary gap between the winners and losers is large, the temptation to use performance-enhancing drugs will quite likely remain,” Mulholland said. “The ultimate irony is, had Simpson not died racing under the influence of drugs, he’d hardly be remembered today.”

What a sad legacy.*

France: The Cycling Capital of the World

(Originally published in the May 6 to 12, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle ---

a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines ---

by Sly L. Quintos, Associate Editor.)

THERE are 988 bicycling competitions (or 19 a week) scheduled to happen worldwide this year under the Union Cycliste Internationale or UCI (International Cycling Union in English) --- the world’s governing body for international competitive cycling events.

Of the 988, five hundred thirty-three (or about 54 percent) are road races, nearly 200 are mountain bikes and almost 60 are indoors. The rest are trials, BMX, track, cyclo-cross and para-cycling.

France is undisputedly the cycling competition capital of the world with 117 of the 988 competitions scheduled worldwide this year happening there. Of the 117 (of which 16 happen this month of May), 86 are road race (ranging from one to 4 stages) while 17 are mountain bike.

The toughest cycling competition in the world is the three-week Tour de France (road race) which attracts the world’s top riders and teams. First staged in 1903, its route changes every year, but the race always finishes in Paris. Since 1975, the climax of the final stage has been along the Champs-Élysées. It is considered the most popular of the “Grand Tours” --- referring to the three major European professional cycling stage races to include the Giro d’Italia (established in 1909) and the Vuelta a España (established in 1935).

This year’s Tour de France will run from June 30 to July 200 covering 3,479 kilometers with one prologue and 20 stages (9 flat stages; 4 medium mountain stages one with a summit finish; 5 mountain stages with two summit finish; two individual time-trial stages and two rest days).

Another multi-stage cycling competition happening in France every March of each year is the Paris–Nice --- more popularly known as “The Race to the Sun”. It was first run in 1933 and was won by Alfons Schepers of Belgium. The most successful rider in Paris–Nice has been Sean Kelly from Ireland, who won seven consecutive races from 1982 to 1988. During the 2003 race, Kazakhstan's Andrei Kivilev died due to head injury sustained in an accident. His death prompted the UCI to mandate the use of helmets in all competition, except for the last part of a race with an uphill finish. Subsequently, the rule was changed to require helmets at all times.

Also held every March each year in France is the Tour de Normandie in the region of Normandie, France. The race was first run in 1939, but was not held in the periods of 1940-1955 and 1960-1980. It was originally a race for amateurs, but was opened for professionals in 1996.

Of the almost a thousand cycling competitions scheduled this year all over the world, 61 were held in January, one of is the 11th Asian Indoor Cycling Championships held in Hong Kong.

In February this year, 85 competitions were held (to include the Asian Cycling Championships in Malaysia and the Le Tour de Langkawi also in Malaysia) while 115 were held in March (to include the Asian BMX Championships and Asian BMX Junior Championships, the Tour de Taiwan) and 146 were April --- to include the Princess Mamackakri Sirindhon's Cup Tour of Thailand, the Maha Chakri Sirindhon's Cup Women's Tour of Thailand, the Le Tour de Filipinas, the Melaka Governor’s Cup in Malaysia, the Tour de (South) Korea, and the Tour of Borneo.

This month of May, there are 136 races scheduled to be held across the globe to include the Tour of Chongming Island World Cup in China; the Yawatahama International Cross-Country Race in Yawatahama City, Ehime, Japan; the Tour de Kumano in Japan, and the Tour of Japan. Other Asian major cycling competitions scheduled are the Tour of Singkarak in Indonesia in June and the Tour of Beijing in October.

Following France as the cycling competition capital of the world is Belgium with 112 competitions scheduled this year of which 11 will happen this May alone. In Italy, 107 competitions are scheduled this year, of which 10 will happen this May.

Of the 988 UCI-sanctioned cycling competitions scheduled this year all over the world, only one happens in the Philippines --- the Le Tour de Filipinas.*