Thomas Voeckler was again one of the stars of the Tour de France, win­ning two stages and the climber’s polka dot jer­sey while rid­ing his Colnago C59 Team Edition bike. Yet the like­able Frenchman is still hun­gry for suc­cess in 2012 and has made the world road race cham­pi­onships on the hilly roads of Limburg in the south of the Netherlands, as a final goal of the season.

Voeckler rode some cri­teri­ums after the Tour de France but returned to seri­ous rac­ing last week in Italy. He rode aggres­sively at the Tre Valli Varesine race, help­ing team­mate David Veilleux win the race, before fin­ish­ing ninth in the chase group. He then com­pleted the Tour du Poitou-Charentes stage race in France, fin­ish­ing a close sec­ond on the final stage.

“I was happy to be back rac­ing, I always miss it. I was also happy to race in Italy because theirs is so much pas­sion and tra­di­tion,” Voeckler explained in a recent inter­view, reveal­ing he recov­ered from the Tour de France by mix­ing time with his fam­ily and some train­ing on his home roads in the Vendee region of South West France.

“After the Tour de France I only ride five cri­teri­ums. Other rid­ers in my sit­u­a­tion would have take more advan­tage but I didn’t want to tire myself out.”

Voeckler is a favourite for the GP Ouest-France – a race he won in 2007, and will then travel to Canada for the GP Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec on September 7 and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal on September 9. Voeckler won the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec in 2010.

These impor­tant and test­ing UCI WorldTour races will give him con­fir­ma­tion of his fit­ness as the world cham­pi­onships approach. The men’s road race is on Sunday September 23^rd.

“The two Canadian races will give me a clear indi­ca­tion of my form. I’ve got a plan in my head and hope it all comes together,” he said.

Voeckler is admired for his panache and suc­cess but also for his sin­cer­ity and hon­esty. He would love to be world cham­pion but knows that it cycling’s most cov­eted one-day race is never easy to win.

“I know that it’s prob­a­bly 99% sure that my career will end with­out me ever pulling on the rain­bow jer­sey but I also know that if I don’t give it every­thing to try, I’ll never know if I’m able to turn that 1% into suc­cess,” he said.

“Even if I was fifth in the Amstel Gold race (on the same roads as this year’s world cham­pi­onships), it doesn’t mean any­thing. There will be at least 100 rid­ers look­ing to win. But I won’t go to the world cham­pi­onships to attack a long way out like I’ve often done in other races. I’m ready to change my way of rac­ing to win that race.”

Colnago bikes keep on win­ning! After a hugely suc­cess­ful week in France and Italy, David Veilleux of Team Europcar gave Colnago yet another vic­tory at the Tre Valli Varesine clas­sic in Italy after some superb tac­tics with team leader Thomas Voeckler.

The 24 year-old Canadian showed his form last week by win­ning a stage and the over­all clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the Mi-Août Bretonne race. He stepped up a level in Italy, adding the Hors Category one-day race to his rapidly grow­ing palmares.

Veilleux won alone on his Colnago, more than a minute clear of the sec­ond placed rider. He and Voeckler was part of the deci­sive attack of the race along with when Voeckler was caught after sev­eral strong attacks, Veilleux took his chance, going clear alone with 18km to go. He faced a final lap of a tough fin­ish­ing cir­cuit but rode his heart out and held off a chase by for­mer Italian national cham­pion Giovanni Visconti to win alone, happy to have landed the biggest vic­tory of his career.

It was only Thomas Voeckler’s sec­ond race after the Tour de France, yet the dou­ble stage win­ner and king of the moun­tains win­ner showed his class by fin­ish­ing ninth, while Colnago-CSF Inox team leader Domenico Pozzovivo was one place behind him. Both showed they are ready for an aggres­sive final part of the 2012 sea­son. It can only mean there are more pro vic­to­ries to come for Colnago thanks to Team Europcar and Colnago-CSF Inox.

Colnago’s run of suc­cess con­tin­ued at the Tour du Limousin, with Japan’s Yukiya Arashiro snatch­ing over­all vic­tory after an aggres­sive ride on the last stage of the race.

The friendly Team Europcar rider went on the attack with Jeremy Roy of France in the last 10km of a hard fought stage raced in the heat of the French sum­mer. Roy attacked alone and won the stage but Arashiro never let him gain too much time, fin­ish­ing 21 sec­onds behind at the fin­ish in Limoges. Time bonuses proved to be vital, leav­ing Arashiro and Roy on the same time over­all. Arashiro was declared the win­ner thanks to bet­ter plac­ing on the four stages of the race.

The Tour du Limousin has been a huge suc­cess for Colnago. Jure Kocjan of Team Type 1 Sanofi won both stage one and stage three. He started the final stage in the race leader’s yel­low jer­sey but missed out on the final stage as Arashiro went on the attack and secured over­all victory.

“Yukiya is a brave rider and this is a great win for him. He deserved it but it could have been any of our rid­ers as they were all very strong,” Team Europcar directeur sportif Ishmael Mottier said proudly. We were always in the right attacks as Yohann Gene proved when he was caught just 300 metres from the fin­ish on Thursday after being on the attack for 150km.”

Colnago bikes secured a rare dou­ble vic­tory on one day, with Sacha Modolo win­ning the Coppa Bernocchi race in Italy and Jure Kocjan win­ning stage three of the Tour du Limousin in France. Both rid­ers won sprint fin­ishes, ensur­ing that their Colnago bikes were first across the line.

Kocjan used his pow­er­ful sprint to win the hilly 189km stage in the heart of France. He also took back the race leader’s yel­low jer­sey thanks to a 10-second time bonus, giv­ing him a great chance of over­all vic­tory. Like most of his Team Type 1 – Sanofi team­mates, the tal­ented Slovenian rides a Colnago M10 S bike.

Modolo won after a per­fect lead out from his Colnago-CSF Inox team­mates. The Italian team chased down the break­away of the stage and con­trolled late moves before Sonny Colbrelli set up Modolo per­fectly and even man­aged to take sec­ond place. Modolo used his black Colnago C59 Italia Team Edition to take his first big win of the sum­mer and silence his critics.

“We rode a per­fect race,” Modolo said. “It wasn’t easy because the other teams didn’t want to help us very much and that’s why I even went in a break­away on the last lap. Were a young team and when we get upset, we fight back. I’ve been crit­i­cised a lot recently and I wanted to prove that I’m not a bad rider.”

Slovenian’s Jure Kocjan gave Colnago yet another vic­tory in France and took the first race leader’s jer­sey at the Tour du Limousin with another aggres­sive ride in the sum­mer heat. Kocjan used his fin­ish­ing speed to beat French sprinter Julian Simon and new sta­giaire rider Eduardo Speulveda, with the rest of the pelo­ton all behind them.

It was Kocjan’s first vic­tory of the 2012 sea­son but con­firmed the tal­ent and con­sis­tency he showed in 2011, when he scored a long series of top-ten plac­ing. The Team Type 1 – Sanofi rider showed his form by fin­ish­ing sev­enth in Saturday’s GP di Camaiore in Italy and will now try to defend the race leader’s yel­low jersey.

Team Type 1 –Sanofi also won the team prize ahead of the Ag2r-La Mondiale WorldTour team, thanks to excel­lent plac­ings from Julien Antomarchi and Vegard Stake Laengen. Team Type 1 – Sanofi has a strong team to help defend Kocjan’s leader’s jer­sey in the three remain­ing stages of the French stage race. These include Laszlo Bodrogi, Daniele Callegarin, Remi Cusin, Filippo Fortin and Type 1 dia­betes rider Martijn Verschoor, while Massimo Podenzana expertly guides the rid­ers from the team car as directeur sportif.

There is some­thing spe­cial about own­ing a Colnago bike and the hun­dreds of posts on the Colnago offi­cial Facebook page con­firms that the love for Colnago is shared around the world.

People love buy­ing new Colnago bikes but there is also a real pas­sion for vin­tage Colnago bikes from the sev­en­ties, eight­ies and nineties. People appre­ci­ate the unique his­tory of Colnago bikes and love the design and qual­ity of the bikes. They con­sider restor­ing a vin­tage Colnago as a labor of love. They metic­u­lously search out com­po­nents to com­plete the bikes and then rightly show them off to the world, by rid­ing them on their favourite roads and on the internet.

One of the best places to see vin­tage Colnago bikes is the ped​al​room​.com web­site. It is man­aged by Christian Coomer –a bike lov­ing web designer who lives in Seattle. The site allows peo­ple to post pho­tos, infor­ma­tion and bike spec­i­fi­ca­tions of their bike col­lec­tions and exchange infor­ma­tion on the bikes they love so much.

142 Colnago bikes have so far been posted on the Pedal Room, with stun­ning photo gal­leries of each one. The bikes include mod­ern car­bon fibre mod­els such as the Colnago Extreme power but also lots of Colnago Mexico and Colnago Master frames. We par­tic­u­larly like the Colnago Master Tricolore restored by Marios and the Colnago Master Olympic Pista restored by Moik.

We love vin­tage bikes too. That’s why we cre­ated the Master 30^th bike as part of the new collection.

The orig­i­nal Master was cre­ated in the eight­ies and became leg­endary for its shaped tubes, chromed lugs and iconic Master paint work.The new Master 30^th is designed and built in Italy using DT15V steel and has a chromed Precisa fork. It is avail­able in 16 dif­fer­ent sizes and three color schemes. It’s a true mod­ern classic.

Visit www​.face​book​.com/​C​o​l​n​ago to see vin­tage Colnago bikes from around the world.

Bryan Coquard showed his immense tal­ent and huge poten­tial for the future by win­ning the sil­ver medal in the men’s Omnium at the London Olympics.

The Frenchman is only 20 years old but raced with a matu­rity and class that indi­cates he is a future star of the sport. He is already a suc­cess­ful rider on the road with the Colnago-sponsored Vendee U team and will turn pro­fes­sional with Team Europcar in 2013. We can’t wait to see him tak­ing on Mark Cavendish on the other sprint­ers in the pro­fes­sional races.

Coquard fin­ished just two points behind Omnium gold medal­list Lasse Norman Hansen of Denmark, who recov­ered from a crash in the Scratch race to pull back a lap and then dom­i­nate the kilo­me­tre –the final event of the six-race com­pe­ti­tion. Great Britain’s Edward Clancy took the bronze medal.

“I’m super happy,” Coquard said after col­lect­ing his sil­ver medal with a huge smile on his face. “I’ve been think­ing about the Olympics for two years and work­ing very hard. You could say that the Omnium was made for me. It was cre­ated when I was a junior and I went on to become dou­ble junior world cham­pion. I achieved every­thing I wanted. I man­aged to qual­ify for the Olympics and also won the track world Cup stand­ings. Even if I didn’t win gold in London, the Omnium is still my event!

Coquard is look­ing for­ward to rac­ing as a pro­fes­sional and excit­ing pro­fes­sional cycling fans just as he did on the Olympic velodrome.

“I’ve still got a lot of child­hood dreams. I realised I wanted to race when I first watched the Tour de France. I’m going to turn pro­fes­sional with Team Europcar in January. I love spec­tac­u­lar rac­ing, that enter­tains the pub­lic. Thomas Voeckler and Pierre Rolland were inspi­ra­tional again this year. I want to be part of that, I want to win races and excite people.”