VeloNews History

Northeast Bicycle News (August 28, 1972): Billy Farrell wins New England Championship.

Before the Tour de France held its inaugural edition in 1903, bike racing was the biggest professional sport in North America, while American track racers were among the best in the world. Arthur Zimmerman was the first world sprint champion in 1893, Willie Hamilton broke the World Hour Record at Denver in 1898, Charlie Miller and Frank Waller won the world’s first six-day race at New York’s Madison Square Garden n 1899, and that same year Marshall W. “Major” Taylor became the first black man to win a major world sports title (the professional track sprint championship). Track racing was so popular through the early part of the 20th century that thousands packed stadiums and velodromes throughout North America, with the top cyclists earning far more than baseball stars of the era.

Velo-news: June 27, 1975

Though VeloNews can’t trace its roots back that far, the magazine (originally named Northeast Bicycle News) was founded by Brattleboro, Vermont publishers Barbara and Bob George in 1972 — nine years before Jonathan Boyer became the first American to compete at the Tour de France. The publication was acquired in 1988 by Inside Communications of Boulder, Colorado, where the company is still based. VeloNews, which has won numerous national and regional magazine awards, has now been providing domestic and international race reports and results, training tips, athlete interviews and tech reviews for more than 35 years.

Prior to the Internet, the publication ran a 1-900 phone results service, which provided same-day reports and interviews from the Tour de France as early as 1989. The Web site, VeloNews.com, first showed up on browsers in 1994, and started its full-time presence on the Internet in the spring of 1995. VeloNews.com’s timeliness, comprehensive news coverage and reliability have been recognized across the industry, as well as by such publications as The New York Times and Fast Company.

August 13, 1999, Velo-news becomes VeloNews. Lance Armstrong wins his first Tour de France.

The current Web site complements VeloNews magazine with the broadest range of content yet — same-day race coverage, with live updates and video interviews from major events; daily news coverage; feature stories and columns by expert VeloNews writers; photo galleries from the sport’s top shooters; updated team rosters, rankings and rider bios; the latest technical news and reviews; and reader forums.

If you are wondering where the magazine and Web site get their names, just remember that vélo is the French word for a “racing bike” (as opposed to bicyclette for an everyday “bicycle”). Hence the name “velodromes” for custom-built, banked tracks where Olympic-style track racing takes place today — just as it did more than a century ago.