VeloVeritas

Evan Oliphant – a Bit of Everything (2)

Ever-versatile Endura man, Evan Oliphant crammed just about every discipline into last weekend – criterium, Premier one day and a British grass track title.

We had a word…

British Elite Road Championships (1)

Kristian House of Rapha-Condor won, Chris Froome was man of the match and there was plenty of sunshine.

That’s the British Champs in a nutshell; the race story is up on Pez – it really was a great day.

But as well as our Pez hats, we had on our “Supporter Hamish Haynes” and “VeloVeritas” bonnets too.

Endura Racing Team Launch (0)

“Hi Ed, I’ve finally heard from Cycling Weekly – they want 300 words, but also if you want to do “Minute With” interviews with some of the riders, that’d be good also.”

Jeez! Work from “The Comic” and a brief too – I’m so used to rolling up at races with a camera, pencil and notebook then just doing what I want, that I’d forgotten about that word count stuff.

Maybe if I make a good job, I’ll get to do Girvan again; they haven’t forgiven me for last year, when I forsook ‘Com one’ at Girvan for a team car at Milan-San Remo.

Team Endura – Under the Radar; but not for long! (0)

Here at VeloVeritas we felt that those Endura Racing boys would be giving us plenty to write about in 2009, so we thought we’d better sit them down with them and have a few words.

As well as Jonathan McBain (owner of Pedal Power Cycles) and a lean and fit looking Gary Hand, a keen as mustard James McCallum was there too; so it turned into a lot of words!

Craig MacLean – Trying Something New (0)

“It is quite noisy when your head’s scraping along the ice !”

Craig MacLean’s answer to our question as to whether it’s noisy in a two man bobsleigh.

What’s the former World Team Sprint gold medallist and Individual Sprint silver medallist doing in a bobsleigh? Read on!

Chris Hoy – Performances and Plans (0)

We’ve been stalking him since Beijing; and at last, we’ve cracked him – Chris Hoy, Olympic gold medallist in the team sprint, keirin and individual sprint.

We’ve heard that he now retains Max Clifford, “PR guru to the stars,” as his agent, so we decided we’d better check out the financial aspect of the interview, first.

Shane Sutton – Compassionately Ruthless (0)

Nine World and Eight Olympic titles; that’s Team GB’s haul for 2008 – so far, that is. That kind of excellence doesn’t ‘just happen,’ who’s behind it?

The GB head coach is Aussie, Shane Sutton – he was still in Beijing the day after his squad’s triumphant campaign ended, when we spoke to him.

Craig MacLean – Where to go from here? (1)

Nine golds and two silvers. That’s what Team GB took away from the Manchester World Track Championships, back in April. A repeat performance in Beijing is entirely possible. How does British Cycling do it ?

One of the reasons is that their selection criteria is ruthless; past glory counts for nothing. The 2000 Olympic kilometre champion, Jason Queally was interviewed in ‘The Guardian’ newspaper recently and spoke of his shock and disappointment at not making the cut, despite riding faster in the team sprint than he’s ever done before – but it wasn’t fast enough for the selectors.

Another GB stalwart – with nine world championship medals, not to mention Olympic and Commonwealth Games precious metals – but who will not be on the plane to Beijing either, is our very own Craig Maclean.

Chris Hoy – Scotland’s Champion of Champions! (0)

He’s won the World Kilometre Championship four times, the World Team Sprint Championship twice, the World Keirin Championship twice, and now he’s completed an unequalled sprinters’ “quadruple” by winning the World Individual Sprint Championship…Oh – and he’s the reigning Olympic Kilometre Champion as well!

He’s Scotland’s Chris Hoy, and after we’d told him how proud we are of him, he took time to answer our questions.

Chris Hoy – The Next Olympic Keirin Champ? (0)

You’re the Olympic kilometre champion, but the ‘powers that be’ decide to remove the event from the programme at the next Olympics – what do you do? If you’re Chris Hoy, you go out and transform yourself into the best keirin rider in the world!

James McCallum – British Criterium National Champion (0)

“I knew that if I was second or third round the last corner then nobody would beat me.” And so it proved, as James McCallum added British Criterium Championship gold to Commonwealth Games points bronze, last night in Otley. VeloVeritas spoke to James just hours after his win.

Evan Oliphant – The season so far (0)

It’s been a while since we spoke to our friendly Scottish Pro Evan, so we figured this was a good time to get a progress report for the season so far, how life is treating him in Belgium and the setup in the new DFL team.

Norrie Drummond – A Hard Man in Belgium (0)

It’s just under two weeks now until the 2007 European season starts with the GP d’Ouverture La Marseillaise in the south of France on February 6th. The first major tests come a few weeks later though, on the first weekend in March, far from the Mediterranean, to the north, in Flanders.

Het Volk and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne are true classics in all but UCI category, albeit shorter than the Tour of Flanders with which they share many kilometres of parcours.

Alex Coutts – Scottish Professional with Flanders (0)

After a year at DFL, 23 year-old Scottish professional Alex Coutts from Gorebridge, has renewed old sponsorship links with Flemish bike concern, Flanders.

We caught-up with him recently at mentor John Anderson’s Edinburgh shop, the Bicycleworks. Coutts was just back from a training trip to Spain and is already looking like he is ready for action.

John Kennedy – Helping Simpson in Le Tour (0)

July 1960, the GB Tour de France team hotel somewhere in France. Britain’s white hope for Tour de France glory, the late, great Tom Simpson is discussing the events of the day with team mate, Brian Robinson.

Simpson had punctured during the stage and one of his GB team domestiques had brought him back up to the bunch; “I’ll tell you what, Brian – that Kennedy is strong, he was riding like ten men today when we were coming back from that puncture.”