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both the 2007 and 2008 Tours de France: his moodiness earned him the nickname “Cuddles.” Late 2009 saw him truly make history with a late solo attack to win Australia’s first world title in the men’s elite race at Mendrisio (see DOGS to learn how his love for his pet colored his relations with the media).

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    BAHAMONTES , Federico
    (b. Spain, 1928)
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    Spain’s first TOUR DE FRANCE winner, and one of the finest mountain climbers the sport has ever produced. The “Eagle of Toledo” was the first rider to be crowned King of the Mountains in all three major Tours, a feat emulated only by LUIS HERRERA of Colombia. He won the best-climber award in the Tour de France six times, a record that stood for 40 years. He is also one of the few cyclists to race the Vuelta, Giro, and Tour in the same year, finishing 6th, 17th, and 8th in the three events in 1958.
    Bahamontes is celebrated as the rider who would race away from the field on the Tour’s great passes, then would stop and eat an ice cream at the top. That’s actually one of the race’s great myths, a one-off incident, as Bahamontes explained in an interview: “one of my spokes broke on the way up [the Galibier], so I attacked so that the repair could be done at the top. But the team car with the spare was stuck behind the bunch, so I bought an ice cream to pass the time.”
    Bahamontes turned to cycling as a way of escaping starvation during the Spanish civil war, won his first race at 17, and was King of the Mountains in the Tour at his first attempt in 1954. He was received by the dictator General Franco after winning the Tour in 1959. His victory came partly thanks to a stalemate in the French team, which had two leaders, JACQUES ANQUETIL and Roger Rivière, neither of whom would work with the other. Bahamontes was a nervous, irrritable man who threw his bike into a ravine in the 1954 Tour because he was
fed up and once chased a rival through the peloton brandishing a pump. After retirement he ran a bike shop in his home town.
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    (SEE ALSO SPAIN , WAR , POLITICS )
    BALLANTINE, Richard
    Contender for the title of cycling’s biggest-selling author, Ballantine introduced generations of Britons and Americans to cycling as a lifestyle through his million-selling Richard’s Bicycle Books series, which have been market-leaders since the first one was launched in 1972. Ballantine was an adept trend reader, founding the UK’s first glossy cycling magazine for the general market— Bicycle Magazine in 1981—and importing some of the first MOUNTAIN BIKES to the UK.
    Prompted by the 1970s oil crisis, Ballantine was an early advocate of cycling as part of a green lifestyle, arguing strongly against the universal use of motor vehicles and suggesting that cycling was life-enhancing and liberating. The Bicycle Book , a practical guide to cycling for the novice, has been compared to Alex Comfort’s Joy of Sex for the way it changed mindsets and established a whole new market. Its great strengths are the accessible way that essential cycling knowledge is presented and Ballantine’s passion and humor about everything two-wheeled—one section in the Commuting chapter is simply labelled “Joy.”
    It also includes a robust section on dealing with DOGS, a guide to the dangers of cars, and argues strongly for DEFENSIVE CYCLING. Ballantine’s latest work is City Cycling , which caters for the fast-growing cycle-commuter market.
    BARTALI, Gino
    Born: Ponte a Ema, Italy, July 18, 1914
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    Died: Ponte a Ema, Italy, May 5, 2000
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    Major wins: Tour de France 1938, 1948, 12 stage wins; Giro d’Italia 1936–7, 1946, 17 stage wins; Milan–San Remo 1939–40, 1947, 1950; Giro di Lombardia 1936, 1939–40; Championship of Zurich 1946, 1948; Tour of Switzerland 1946–7
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    Nicknames: the Pious One, the Iron Man, the Old One
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    The Italian remains the oldest man to win the