I saw this well made mini documentary about World Champion track racer Shane Perkins over on Drunk Cyclist. It’s pretty unreal what he goes through to be the fastest in the world. Guaranteed to make you feel like a slouch about your own training. Then again, I don’t feel bad saying I’ll never be that dedicated to one single pursuit in my life.
Posted in Everything Else, Racing
Tagged hungry beast, keirin world champion, shane perkins, track racing, track world champion
Note from Josh: Sorry for the radio silence around here. I started a new job last week, so that’s taken precedence over The Bicycle Story for the time being. Things should be back to their semi-regular normalcy here soon.
I’m a big fan of Brian Vernor’s work. He’s produced some of cyclocross’ mainstay documentaries. He’s also a great photographer that not only makes wonderful images of cycling, but the people, fans, atmosphere, and culture that surround the sport as well. To be frank, it’s hard not to be a little jealous of the life Vernor has crafted for himself (at least the public image of that life he shares on his blog and through his work). He travels all over the world to shoot photos, make films, and ride bikes. It’s pretty rad.
Like much of his work, the latest film follows that “travel, shoot, bikes” formula. Vernor joined the Jamis mountain bike team down in Chile for the Trans Andes Challenge, a 580-km mountain bike stage race across the Andes. Check out the trailer below:
http://vimeo.com/24301987
Victoria Pendleton is one of track racing’s most successful athletes. Her long list of palmarés includes an Olympic gold medal and several world championships. This short video tells Pendleton’s story of how she was introduced to cycling by her father (a former British grass-track national champion), the incredibly heavy training required to be the best in the world, and how it feels to fly around the track at 75km/hr.
Paris-Roubaix has come and gone again. Sharper racing analysts than I have written smart recaps of Sunday’s cobblestone sufferfest (this one from Cycle Sport is particularly good), so I’ll spare you my take. Instead, I’ll share with you this amazing video from the race. It’s been making the rounds in the cycling Internet world, but it’s too good not to repost.
Shot at 4,000 frames per second, the video has nearly the same quality as still photography. It does a brilliant job of showing the pain and hardship the riders face on their 260km journey to the Roubaix velodrome. Watch it:
Alfonsina Strada
Though today’s major European stage races like the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France are about as difficult as any form of bike racing, their early incarnations were brutal beasts in ways the modern races are not. Racers would set out for 300km stages over unpaved roads on single speed bikes with little if any organized support along the way. Winning was as much about surviving as anything and the winner would often finish hours ahead of the lanterne rouge. Simply completing these races was an impressive feat. To do so as the only woman in history to race in any of the three Grand Tours elevates Alfonsina Strada to “serious bad ass” status.
Adventure Journal posted a link to the Wikipedia entry on Strada last week. She was a dedicated racer in early 20th-century Italy known for winning nearly every race she entered against women and many of those against men. Her reputation once earned her an invitation to race the Russian Grand Prix. Thanks to some clerical slight-of-hand, Strada was able to enter to enter the 1924 Giro d’Italia.