Rocky Mountain High’s and Low’s
by Mike Higgins
My companion, Frédéric Magné, asks me if I’m OK – I’ve barely ridden half this distance before, and the 37-year-old French- man is a seven-times world champion track cyclist. No, Fred, I’m bloody knackered. The boisterous track coach of the World Cycling Centre (WCC) grins at me and, with a spin of the pedals, sets off up to the moun-tain pass ahead, leaving me to ponder what other treats the WCC has in store.
The WCC, on the outskirts of Aigle, a Valais town to the south-east of the Lake of Geneva, is a cyclist’s heaven. It is the showcase of the regulatory body for cycling worldwide, the International Cycling Union (UCI), and at its gleaming, four-year-old headquarters you can pursue just about every kind of two-wheeled sport: those you’ve heard of, such as track cycling, road racing, mountain biking, BMXing; and some you’re probably not too familiar with, such as “artistic cycling” and the team game “cycle ball”.
And yet, until this year, no English-speaking cycle-touring outfits had teamed up with the WCC to take advantage of its facilities. Then Peter Easton of the New York-based Velo Classic Tours approached the WCC and found it was only too keen to throw its doors open to him and his clients. Go to Article
