To Cyclism.
Hey readers!
Today I feel to speak about cyclism.
Cyclism has been something very important to me in the last 6-8 years . I have been racing, training, supporting, exulting, raging , meeting new people, travelling etc.
This initiative is about cycling as well. And today cycling during Milano Sanremo was expressed to its maximum : hundreds of professional riders cycling under rain, snow, wind and cold during the Milano-Sanremo. I have been racing on those road and in the amateur Milano-Sanremo race in June 2012. In the last 15km of the race even though Iwas sitting in my room in UK my heart started beating faster and faster…it was amazing.
Cycling bring us incredible emotions and to me it rappresent one of the highest expression of sport.
Unfortunately it is also able to bring incredible sadness. And this happened as well during this weekend. Ex pro rider Andrea Nencini died during a race this weekend (Race that he won last year). Probably a heart attack. Reality is that everytime you jump on the bike, you face a series of risks. Everyday. Race or Training. Road or MTB. We should always respect our life and the one of those around us while cycling.
R.I.P
This is not a story about last place
Hi! Today I would like to re-blog an article I have been reading wrote by Jason Gay.
Taylor Phinney’s solo ride during the Tirreno-Adriatico on Monday.
This is a story about a guy who finished last. Which is technically true. You can look up the results of the race, and you’ll see his name, right there, lonely at the bottom. Taylor Phinney. USA. Finishing time of six hours, twenty-two minutes, fifty-four seconds. One hundred-and-ninth place. Last.but this story is better than that.First, about Taylor Phinney. Remember that name. You might already know it. Bike racer from Boulder, Colo., 22 years old. The son of two cycling legends, Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter. A big dude on the bike, at 6 feet 5 inches, 180 pounds, Taylor Phinney is one of the most promising young cyclists in the world. He’s already been to the Olympics twice. Won a stage of the prestigious Giro d’Italia last year. He is expected to have many great days in the sport.
Monday didn’t begin like one of those days. Phinney was competing in Italy’s Tirreno-Adriatico stage race, and this penultimate stage was a doozy. Up and down, down and up, 209 kilometers of punishment, including a 27% climb so comically steep that some riders got off their bikes and pushed them uphill. Many riders quit. Later the race organizer would admit that the stage was too difficult, even for elite pros.
Phinney didn’t expect to win this stage. He just wanted to hang around, because the next day brought a time trial against the clock, and Phinney had a chance for a good result in that event. But the day soon unraveled. His legs weren’t feeling great, and then his bike busted its chain. He had to get a replacement and chase his way back to the pack.
“I just was dangling,” Phinney said on the phone, from his home in Tuscany. “We kept going over these really difficult climbs. I’d get back to the group and I would get dropped. I’d get back again, then get dropped.”
In the U.S., cycling typically doesn’t have a broad fan base, but WSJ’s Jason Gay checks in on Mean Street from London where cycling is all the rage.
Bike racing is a sport that fetishizes suffering. Anyone who’s done it talks almost mystically about painful days on the bike, about the serenity achieved by pedaling through the agony. But even the best can only take so much. Soon Phinney found himself in a small group of 30 or so riders who had fallen off the main field, with about 130 kilometers, or 80 miles, left. The riders in the group began talking. Phinney said it became clear that nobody wanted to finish. Drop out now, get out of the cold. This is no shame. It happens all the time. Fight another day.
But Phinney wanted to fight now. He had to complete the race under the time limit to do the time trial Tuesday. “If I wanted to finish the race, I was going to have to do it by myself,” he said.
So that’s what he did. As the rest of the group abandoned the race, Phinney put his head down and pedaled. He was suddenly alone. The weather was miserable. It began to rain. And Phinney kept thinking of one thing.
“I would just think of my dad,” he said.
Davis Phinney has lived with Parkinson’s disease for more than half of Taylor Phinney’s life. One of the great American racers of all time, a Tour de France stage winner and Olympian, Davis’s day is often met by frustrating physical challenges. Tasks that were once simple take so much longer. Ordinary life requires patience.
That’s what kept his son pedaling in the cold Italian rain.
“I knew that if my dad could be in my shoes for one day—if all he had to do was struggle on a bike for six hours, but be healthy and fully functional—he would be me on that day in a heartbeat,” Taylor Phinney said. “Every time I wanted to quit, every time I wanted to cry, I just thought about that.”
He had so many miles to ride. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” he said. “The race has gone by, and people aren’t really expecting one rider slogging along by himself.” Fans on the side of the road offered to push him up hills. But Phinney remembered a story his Dad had told him about one of his old Tour de France teams, making a pact to decline pushes.
Taylor would do the same. No pushes.
“He never lost his motivation,” said Fabio Baldato, an assistant director for Phinney’s team, BMC Racing, who was driving a car behind Phinney the entire route. “It was unbelievable.”
“He wanted so badly to finish the race,” said Phinney’s teammate, Thor Hushovd, a former world champion.
Hours later, Phinney crossed the line, exhausted. He finished almost 15 minutes after the second-to-last rider, thirty-seven minutes behind the winner. He didn’t make the time cut for the day, which meant he couldn’t compete in Tuesday’s time trial. It was a bummer, but Phinney was too zonked to be devastated. During his post-race massage, he cried like crazy. On Twitter, Phinney wrote about riding for his Dad and called it “probably the most trying day I’ve had on a bike.” When Phinney’s saga was reported on the website VeloNews, cycling fans went crazy. These have been bleak times for the sport, ripped apart by doping scandals. Phinney’s solo effort—and his emotions post-race—had stirred something soulful. “Emotion is powerful and undeniably human,” Phinney’s mother, Connie Carpenter, said in an email from Italy.
Back home in Colorado, Davis Phinney was marveling at the whole story. You can still find Davis on his bike, usually on the fancy carbon-fiber city commuter he got from his son. Cycling remains a sanctuary—”easier than walking, in a sense,” he said. But the daily routine remains full of hassles. Davis Phinney keeps a sense of humor about it, jokingly referring to himself as “Turtleboy.” He began a foundation to give people living with Parkinson’s tools for living well—for achieving little victories.
Davis Phinney said he didn’t learn about Taylor’s ride until after it was over. Friends told him how inspired they were by his son. When he heard that Taylor had been thinking about him the whole time, he was floored.
“I have almost no words for how amazing it makes me feel,” Davis Phinney said. He wrote in an email to his son:
You make me so happy and beyond proud—and that is better than any medicine and can defeat any disease.
The results are wrong. This is not a story about a guy who finished last. Taylor Phinney won that race.
Something about : Newhaven!
Newhaven is on my route not because I have decided it but because it is a forced path I have to take if I want to take a ferry to France! 🙂 it might be not the most interesting city on earth but I don’t want to be discriminating so I want to give space to it as well. 🙂
Newhaven should be following my plan, my third stop on the way to Genova from Manchester.
Newhaven is a town in the Lewes District of East Sussex in England. It lies at the mouth of the River Ouse, on the English Channel coast. Over the centuries the river has migrated between Newhaven and Seaford in response to the growth and decay of a shingle spit (shoal) at its mouth.
Newhaven has been a Bronze Age fort on what is now Castle hill.
In 480AD Newhaven was inhabited by the Saxons that were calling it “Meeching”.
The city also host a Sussex Yachts Ltd , companies that specialize in yacht refitting.
Interesting is the story behind the Newhaven Lifeboat:
The Newhaven Lifeboat, the first of which was commissioned in 1803, is among the oldest in Britain, and was established some 20 years before the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The town established the rescue lifeboat in response to the wreck of HMSBrazen in January 1800 when only one man of her crew of some 105 men could be saved.The town used a combination of funds raised locally and contributed by Lloyd’s of London to purchase a lifeboat built to Henry Greathead‘s “Original” design. Newhaven also has one of the Watch stations of the National Coastwatch Institution.
Something about…Genova!
Hi!
Morning post today !
I woke up and I felt the urge of giving you some info about Genova. Genova will be the final stage of my 1800km ride in May. I am from Recco, a small city 15km from Genova.
Genua (in latin) it’s the 6th largest city in Italy (population wise). It’s symbols are the Lantern and the San George Cross usually represented between two lyons .
The city is nestled between the mountains and the Mediterranean sea and it’s harbour is one of the most important in Italy. In the past it has been described as the “Domninant” or the “Superb”.The city gave birth between the others to Cristoforo Colombo, Giuseppe Mazzini and Goffredo Mameli .
The more modern history saw the city hosting the 1992 Expo, the G8 summit in 2001 and European Culture capital in 2004.
The city urbanistic is characterized by the “Centro Storico” the most ancient part of the city. This part of the city is characterized by many hystorical buildings and i “Caruggi”.
Thanks to it’s rich past the city is attracting more and more tourists every year, also benefiting by the numerous attractions not far from Genova (5 Terre, Camogli, Portofino, Pisa and much more).
From a sportive point of view, the city has two teams Genoa (the oldest football team in Italy) and Sampdoria, both playing in the Italian mayor football league.
This is a very superficial description, If you are willing to know more, just ask me and I will tell you more! 🙂
Once again , please share the page and if you can , help our initiative with a donation !
Matteo
Something about: Oxford ! “city of dreaming spires”
Today I will talk a bit about Oxford,a fairly small city which is famous around the world for it’s top level university.( Oxford university is the oldest university in UK! ), which is going to be the 2nd stage of my trip!
Founded by the Saxons, damaged by the Norman invasions (who however also built the town castle)
started it’s golden era under King Henry II .
The sweating sickness epidemic of 1517 signed a tragic moment for the city which lost half of the population because of the disease. In 1642 the city housed the court of Charles I (English Civil War period!)
even if the city was strongly in favour of the parliamentarian cause. The city suffered two serious fires in the same period.
In 1790 the Oxford Canal had been built connecting the city with Coventry firstly and then with London. The town Hall was built in 1893.
I couldn’t make it shorter then this !
It’s a city dense of history and known in the world for it’s university which I will be glad to visit during my trip! I hope I will find somebody able to host me there 🙂
You know it but : we need donation to reach our fundraising goal; Help us if you can!
Updates 28/02/2013
Hi (Ciao as we would say in italy!)
Here in Manchester today we are blessed with the second incredible day of sun! Beautiful!
My apologies for having missed a few days on the blog but I have been following so many things !
In these days we received support from quite a few pro cyclist which are going to send their photos with the T-shirts soon!
Also we continue to receive approval for the initiative from different entities in Guatemala, which promise to create a supporting team in loco.
The most important news for the blog is that from today there is a new Administrator, Kasia! She is a proper blogger, Script Writer and Coffee addicted. I am sure she will provide you all with some good content 🙂
Now, I need to go and attend my finance class!
oH, aND i am also back training! GREAT!
I will get back to you soon!
Matteo, Cyclingforrekko
Ah, and remember the link through which you can help us : buonacausa.org/cyclingforrekko !
Facebook Update.
Hi ! Today the cyclingforrekko fan page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/cyclingforrekko has reached 350 likes. This is great! why don’t you help us getting to our next 400 likes target? Following the page you will:
1 Help us
2 Be updated with all the news
3 Receive news from the cycling world
4 Receive news from the charity world
5 Be part of a great group of people!
Also today we have sold 4 T-shirts on Ebay (Just search Cyclingforrekko on ebay!) , this is great!
I would also like to thank in today add, all my highschool mates, they are being very supportive and helpful!
ZOOloren for CyclingforRekko
One of our supporters. THanks so much lorenzo for this video!
Thanks!
Some more news at the end of this Wednesday!
So, I would like to thank everyone because even today, we had a very International crowd on this Page!
Then today I have also brought the bike to the store in order to get it serviced and ready to go! (I CANT WAIT TO GET BACK ON MY BIKE ACTUALLY!)
Then, I would like to share the photos we received to day from a great champion on the bike and off the bIke : Filippo Fortin !
I made a donation to @cyclingforrekko and what are you waiting for? twitter.com/filippo_fortin…
— Filippo Fortin (@filippo_fortin) 20 febbraio 2013
Here is Filippo Fortin again with another great champion : Marcato Marco
We support @cyclingforrekko and you? @marcatomarco twitter.com/filippo_fortin…
— Filippo Fortin (@filippo_fortin) 20 febbraio 2013
: Get to know Marco : http://www.marcomarcato.it/
Get to know Filippo : http://www.cicloweb.it/ciclista/198870/filippo-fortin.html
We won’t ever be greatful enough with Filippo and Marco, thank you!
We need supporters and donors, if you are willing to help get in touch!