What's Cool In Road Cycling

Author

Edmond Hood

It was November 2005 when Ed Hood first penned a piece for PEZ, on US legend Mike Neel. Since then he's covered all of the Grand Tours and Monuments for PEZ and has an article count in excess of 1,800 in the archive. He was a Scottish champion cyclist himself - many years and kilograms ago - and still owns a Klein Attitude, Dura Ace carbon Giant and a Fixie. He and fellow Scot and PEZ contributor Martin Williamson run the Scottish site www.veloveritas.co.uk where more of his musings on our sport can be found.

Dario’s Giro: Let’s Get Going

Edmond Hood
What better way to get inside a Grand Tour than ride along with a top rider? We’ve hooked up with Liquigas super-domestique Dario Cioni for a series of insider Giro reports, as he helps ProTour champ Danilo DiLuca’s quest for victory. We…

Giro06 Stage 1: PEZ Rides Prologue

Edmond Hood
Vai Vai Vai! Il Giro 2006 is underway and even the sun shone in Belgium for today’s race opening TT. Last year’s champ Paulo Savoldelli (Discovery) threw down a super-sized gauntlet with a commanding 11 second salami-slap to all comers,…

Giro06 St1 Preview: PEZ Scopes La Corsa

Edmond Hood
The Giro starts in Liege, Southern Belgium tomorrow, PEZ man Ed Hood is out there taking his Colt hire car to the limit over the 6.2 kilometre course, with a few well chosen words from Italian Liquigas pro Dario Cioni too.

Frans Assez: We’ll Miss You…

Edmond Hood
Frans Assez was as much a fixture in Belgian cycling as cobblestones and bergs. Frans passed away early this week after suffering a heart attack, but not without leaving lasting impressions on the cycling world. Gregg Germer, who rode…

Meet Clayton Barrows: The Man from Laramie

Edmond Hood
In 1955 Columbia Pictures made the movie ‘The Man from Laramie’, starring James Stewart; Halliwell’s Film Guide tells us that; ‘A wandering cowman seeks revenge on those who killed his brother.’ In 2006 there’s another man from Laramie out…

PEZ Hails The Kermesse King

Edmond Hood
Question: You’ve got the post-Ardennes classics, Monday morning blues, what do you do? Answer: Find a kermesse, grab a pils and some frites and hope that the sun shines. What’s a kermesse? Pez-Man Ed Hood found, grabbed, and hoped the day…

LBL06: PEZ Gets In Early

Edmond Hood
LBL is already history, but the news is still fresh, especially looking at the course and how the final kilometers played out to produce the first Spanish winner in history - it's even better to see who the riders themselves saw as…

LBL’06: Valverde Outjumps The Cricket!

Edmond Hood
Only special riders pull off special results, and Alejandro Valverde firmly cemented his place at the very top of cycling’s elite rank, nailing the Ardennes double of Fleche-Wallone and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. The young Spanish talent…

LBL Redux: Barry Hoban Remembers La Doyenne

Edmond Hood
‘La Doyenne’, a French term of respect meaning, ‘oldest member’ – it’s how we refer to Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the oldest of the five ‘monuments’ in cycling. First run in 1894 the roll of honour reads like a ‘who’s who’ of cycling – Ferdi…

Fleche Redux: Paul Watson Remembers ’87

Edmond Hood
Fleche – Wallonne and ‘fairy tale’ in the same breath? It’s an unusual sentence construction but in 1987 it was justified. Larger than life, self-made millionaire Tony Capper was campaigning his British ANC squad across Europe towards his…