Charlie Wegelius retires

iainf72

Everyones fave British Finn has anounced he's retiring. Hopefully he carries on tweeting as he's usually good value.

rick_chasey

Is retiring at 33 quite early?

dave_1

I see it he tweets he got hit by a car yesterday. Quite young to be retiring..but he's been going at that level for 10-12 years which is a hell of a grind

Gary Marshall

is there a link to this story, not seen it anywhere?

a good bloke, i took over his local pub for a while, gave him quite a shock finding a cycling fan running the place, and put paid to his quiet time supposedly away from cycling with very good grace!

Turfle

Time sure does fly. Best of luck in retirement.

calvjones

Good gregario.


Good luck.

inkyfingers

Maybe he could get a job at British Cycling

Seriously though, he's one of the many unheralded worker bees of the peloton, Good luck to him in whatever he does.

Gary Marshall

cycling news story says he is staying in the sport in an as yet unannounced capacity.

Tusher

Sorry to see him go, but hopefully he'll be back as a DS and will carry on tweeting.

hammerite

I'm guessing he wouldn't be one of the higher earners especially since moving away from Liquigas. Racing around the Americas a lot this season probably made him think twice given the amount of travelling it would take from Finland (ignore the Americas bit, just checked his races this year, seems most were in Italy, I go the impression he was racing all over North/South America based on some of his tweets). You can't blame him really.

He tweeted a long time ago asking whether people would use a distance e-mail/web based coach, so perhaps this was one of his ideas.... I'm thinking about the services of a coach

Good luck to him anyway

timoid.

Good luck to him. Always did come across as a thoroughly nice fella.

Greggyr

I spent a few days in the same hotel running up to the start of the 2006 (?) Vuelta. A thoroughly nice chap. There were 4 teams staying there, and all the mechanics would spend their days working on bikes in the car parks. I think it was a team time trial start in Malaga that year. We got chatting and when I said that I was a fan of pro cycling, Charly invites me out for a ride with the team...The hotel was half way up a big hill, and I think that a 15 stone unfit chap had no place on one of their 'spins' !! However, it was great to be asked.
He showed me 'round the team bus, and gave me some team-issue Liquigas mitts and socks (which I still use with pride and have lasted well), and he always popped over for a chat after their daily rides. He also gave me a shirt as we checked out, which I took to the next year's Giro. I collared him before a stage start there, and he kindly signed it for me, and recognised me as the 'stalker' from Spain !! I've always looked for his results since then, and would have loved to have seen him win a GT mountain stage. I think he was close in the '05 Giro when in a breakaway, but got jumped in the last knockings.
I wish him well in the next stage of his career.

Greg, the stalker from Spain.

Beatmaker

Shame. I always used to love watching Charlie in a race as my wife is a Finn, and she wouldn't moan about me watching cycling on tele again if I told her I was watching in support of Charlie.

oldslowman

Gary Marshall wrote:

is there a link to this story, not seen it anywhere?

a good bloke, i took over his local pub for a while, gave him quite a shock finding a cycling fan running the place, and put paid to his quiet time supposedly away from cycling with very good grace!

Blacksmiths @ Westow?

frenchfighter

“One of the my proudest moments in that sense came at the 2006 Giro when I read in Gazzetta dello Sport that Eddy Merckx said his son Axel would have won the previous day’s stage to Peschici if he’d had a teammate like me to help him. It was nice to hear such praise from some one like Merckx. Of course, I’ve got a few regrets and wish I could have done some things differently but I’m proud of my career.”

http://www.velouk.net/2011/09/05/news-c ... to-retire/

frenchfighter

http://blog.canyon.com/?p=2793&lang=en

Turfle

Greggyr wrote:

I spent a few days in the same hotel running up to the start of the 2006 (?) Vuelta. A thoroughly nice chap. There were 4 teams staying there, and all the mechanics would spend their days working on bikes in the car parks. I think it was a team time trial start in Malaga that year. We got chatting and when I said that I was a fan of pro cycling, Charly invites me out for a ride with the team...The hotel was half way up a big hill, and I think that a 15 stone unfit chap had no place on one of their 'spins' !! However, it was great to be asked.
He showed me 'round the team bus, and gave me some team-issue Liquigas mitts and socks (which I still use with pride and have lasted well), and he always popped over for a chat after their daily rides. He also gave me a shirt as we checked out, which I took to the next year's Giro. I collared him before a stage start there, and he kindly signed it for me, and recognised me as the 'stalker' from Spain !! I've always looked for his results since then, and would have loved to have seen him win a GT mountain stage. I think he was close in the '05 Giro when in a breakaway, but got jumped in the last knockings.
I wish him well in the next stage of his career.

Greg, the stalker from Spain.

Good stuff.

dave_1

He no doubt could have won more. I admire the way he dedicated himself ot his team and really, who knows what his relationship was to brailsford and the national team..he had his future employment contract foremost in his mind I am sure, hence his helping of the Italians in the 2006 worlds. Would any of us have done it any differently? In my experience of shortlisting for national selection, some of your own national team would chase you down when in selection level races when not in the national jersey created considerable ill feeling within the national team.

top_bhoy

Dave_1 wrote:

He no doubt could have won more. I admire the way he dedicated himself ot his team and really, who knows what his relationship was to brailsford and the national team..he had his future employment contract foremost in his mind I am sure, hence his helping of the Italians in the 2006 worlds. Would any of us have done it any differently? In my experience of shortlisting for national selection, some of your own national team would chase you down when in selection level races when not in the national jersey created considerable ill feeling within the national team.

In but that one race, he would sacrifice himself for his team, no doubt about that. Unfortunately his actions at the Worlds tarnishes his reputation somewhat - obviously not throughout the peleton. In the closed world of professional cycling it may slightly skew things differently to the world the rest of us live in but actively working for the opposition after volountarily accepting the invitation to race for the national team is where I have difficulties with CW actions at the Worlds.

Surely if there was ill feeling or problems with his team colleagues that year (or simply thought they were useless) to the extent he didn't want to help the team leader ie Hammond, he could have refused, feigned injury, retired, etc?. The thought of clinching another contract was probably upper most in his mind but did he need to do what he did to get it; I'm not so sure but only he will know.

It is the age old problem with national team V pro team, who is the paymaster!?

dave_1

Top_Bhoy wrote:

Dave_1 wrote:

He no doubt could have won more. I admire the way he dedicated himself ot his team and really, who knows what his relationship was to brailsford and the national team..he had his future employment contract foremost in his mind I am sure, hence his helping of the Italians in the 2006 worlds. Would any of us have done it any differently? In my experience of shortlisting for national selection, some of your own national team would chase you down when in selection level races when not in the national jersey created considerable ill feeling within the national team.

In but that one race, he would sacrifice himself for his team, no doubt about that. Unfortunately his actions at the Worlds tarnishes his reputation somewhat - obviously not throughout the peloton. In the closed world of professional cycling it may slightly skew things differently to the world the rest of us live in but actively working for the opposition after volountarily accepting the invitation to race for the national team is where I have difficulties with CW actions at the Worlds.

Surely if there was ill feeling or problems with his team colleagues that year (or simply thought they were useless) to the extent he didn't want to help the team leader ie Hammond, he could have refused, feigned injury, retired, etc?. The thought of clinching another contract was probably upper most in his mind but did he need to do what he did to get it; I'm not so sure but only he will know.

It is the age old problem with national team V pro team, who is the paymaster!?

very fair points Top_bhoy. I'd like to hear CharlyW explain the reasoning behind his decison that day..perhaps an approach was made to him at short notice or he simply fell out with Hammond or Brailsford at the race.

andyp

In true Italian fashion, he was made an offer he couldn't refuse. If you were offered a year's salary for a day's work, would you turn it down?