Tag: Chasing

The bicycle was introduced in the 19th century in Europe by German Inventor Karl von Drais. He is credited with developing the first bicycle. He introduced it to the people in Paris in 1818. It is supposed to originate from the human-powered vehicle called Draisines. Drais invented a walking machine that would help him get around the royal gardens faster. It was known by many names, including the “velocipede,” “dandy horse,” “hobby-horse,” “draisine” and “running machine. It had no pedals and its frame was a wooden beam. It had two same-size in-line wheels with the front one steerable and mounted in a frame which was straddled. In 1839, Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, allegedly completed construction of a pedal driven…

As a professional cyclist you dont get a nice jersey for winning Milan-San Remo. Or Paris-Roubaix. Or the Tour of Flanders. Victory in the Clsica de San Sebastin entitles you to wear a big black beret that looks like a giant floppy pancake for a humiliating moment. But there is a very special jersey that, once you win it at a one day event, it is yours for a year wherever you racethe Spring Classics, the Tour, or the Meiji-Jingu Outer Garden University Criterium. This jersey, is of course, the glorious rainbow-striped confection first donned by Alfredo Binda in 1927 and which has most recently adorned Flashy Entertainer Julian Alaphilipe for the Elite Men and Italy’s Elisa Balsamo for the…

In 2003 I went to cover my first Tour de France as part of the press. PEZ had almost no readers and even less money, so I rented the cheapest car I could find. I drove it for 2 weeks and 2500km across France from Lyon east to the Alps, across the south and into the Pyrenees via Andorra, dodging and weaving as far west as Lourdes, and then all the way back to Lyon. It was one of the hottest summers on record in France – when the mercury tickled 40C degrees every day for weeks.Click the video to watch, and see more at the PEZ Youtube channel here.The car was tiny and had no a/c, but I managed…