Cyclopedia Read Online Free PDF

years.
    The first Australian cycling star was a SIX-DAY rider in the heyday of the American events, Reggie MacNamara, known as the Iron Man. He moved to the US in 1912 and rode 115 of the events. His was one of the longest pro careers ever: he did not retire until 1939 when he was 50 years old. By then he had made a fortune but he ended his days penniless, working as a doorkeeper at Madison Square Garden, his stomach so damaged by the lifestyle and the drugs that he could not keep food down for more than half an hour.
    The first road race in the Southern Hemisphere was Warrnambool—Melbourne, first run in 1895 and now the longest one-day race in the world at 299 km, as well as the second oldest. By 1909, the Australasian road championship was drawing over 500 entries. But Australia enjoyed only a sporadic international presence, simply because it was so far from the European heartland. In 1920, for example, the sprinter Bob Spears, son of a sheep farmer, became world champion in the discipline and made headlines at French tracks for giving boomerang lessons in between races.

    Professionals Don Kirkham and Snowy Munro did manage to finish the Tour in 1914, having spent the season racing in Europe as part of an Australian squad, riding classics such as Milan–San Remo and Paris–Roubaix. Kirkham and Munro rode the Tour as domestiques to the Frenchman Georges Passerieu; no Australian would again attempt the race until SIR HUBERT OPPERMAN made headlines in Europe and back home in the 1930s.
    Australia continued to produce talented track riders such as Russell Mockridge, who won the Olympic kilometer title in 1952 and finished the Tour three years later, but internationally, the turning point came in the 1980s. In 1981 PHIL ANDERSON wore the yellow jersey briefly in the TOUR DE FRANCE, while in 1987 under the guidance of Charlie Walsh the Australian Institute of Sport began a cycling program that churned out droves of fine track racers—who dominated racing at the 2004 OLYMPIC GAMES—and guided their riders to the road through the formation of a European academy in Tuscany, and a pro team sponsored by GIANT.

    Australian Cycle Racing at a Glance
    =
    Â 
    Biggest race: Tour Down Under
    Â 
    Biggest star: Phil Anderson
    Â 
    First Tour stage win: Anderson, Nancy, 1982
    Â 
    Tour overall wins to 2010: none
    Â 
    Australia has given cycling: Cadel Evans, sprinters on road and track, a sunny start to the professional season, and Mulga Bill’s Bike (see BANJO PATERSON for this contribution to cycling culture)
    Â 
    Further reading: Aussie Aussie Aussie Oui, Oui, Oui by Rupert Guinness (Random House Australia, 2003)

    Anderson had already been followed to Europe by talented racers such as Allan Peiper (a member of the FOREIGN LEGION), Stephen Hodge, and Neil Stephens, but the AIS program produced so much talent that by the late 1990s and early years of the 21st century, Australia was a stronger presence—certainly in performance terms, and sometimes even numerically—in the Tour de France than traditional cycling nations such as Belgium and Holland.
    Robbie McEwen twice won the Tour’s most prestigious stage finish, on the Champs-Elysées (1999 and 2002) and won the green jersey in the latter year; Stuart O’Grady managed two spells in the yellow jersey (1998 and 2001), while Brad McGee landed the prologue time trial in 2003. An Australian event of truly international stature came onto the calendar in 2005 with the promotion of the Tour Down Under, which opens the UCI’s ProTour calendar in January.
    With Cadel Evans, meanwhile, Australia finally found a rider capable of challenging for overall titles in major Tours. Evans began racing as a mountain-biker, winning the World Cup in 1998 and 1999 before transferring to the road with Saeco and Mapei then T-Mobile.
    He is a volatile character not exactly popular with the media, who were hardly charitable to him as he came close to winning