Postcard from Bishkek

I am constantly amazed by things that I discover on the internet … I sometimes wonder how we ever coped without it.

Want to know something? … Google it! … Look it up on Wikipedia!

It is not always as simple as that, but it is amazing how much information is out there and how much easier it is to be able to find it than “when I was a lad”.   Both, as a student and as a teacher, it was not just a question of a need to learn facts and figures, to gather knowledge and retain (or remember) it, a far more valuable skill was being able to research; to be able to search for and find information.

Nowadays, however, there is no need to trek off to the library, search through26 the tomes on the shelves and then through catalogues to look for a particular reference, perhaps having to order something through an inter library loan.  Nowadays, there’s a huge amount of information at available out fingertips.

These days a lot of information arrives my mailbox in the form of newsletters.  Many of them just have links to different pages on the internet … if the headline and brief summary in the newsletter look interesting, then click of the link and you’ll be transported away, possibly to the other side of the world, to access information sources that you may never have ever dreamt even existed.

Last week, one of those links took me to a report on the website of a Malaysian newspaper, The New Straits Times.   It might seem odd that I felt drawn to a Malaysian site … well, it certainly surprised me.

This particular report was about Ahmad Lufti Fauzan, a Malaysian cyclist, who came in ninth in a race in the Asian Championships which were being held in Putrajaya a couple of weeks ago.

Who? … What? …

It was not the sort of news story that I would normally find of particular interest.  What had caught my eye, however, and drew me to the story was the phrase in the summary that “Kyrgyzstan’s Eugen Wacker retained the gold medal that he won in Nakhon Ratshasima, Thailand, last year.”

Who? … What? …

This struck me as something which definitely had to be looked into.

Now, I have got used to coming across interesting and surprising snippets of news about Kyrgyzstan from surprising quarters: things like the fact that Kyrgyz yachtsmen have been winning prizes in regattas, (this year in Indonesia … not bad for a small landlocked country), and may be heading for the Olympics … but I have to admit that I had never before heard anything Eugene Wacker: an Asian champion.

That’s probably because I skip over the sports pages in the newspapers and websites.  Although Maxim loves his cycle and gets involved in all sorts of activities, it’s a BMX and he’s really not interested in road racing, mountain biking or any other version of the sport.

So off I went, surfing and searching.  It was a good exercise and taught me once again that actually knowing something isn’t necessarily as important as knowing how to find it.

Unfortunately, for example, on this occasion Google and Wikipedia almost let me down.  Oh, there were some references to him, but precious few hard facts.

He doesn’t, for example, have an entry in  the English version of Wikipedia – but I did eventually find him on some of the pages about Kyrgyzstan in the Olympic Games where he is listed as Vakker.  So, you have to know what to look for.

He does have a page, however, in the French version – reinforcing in my mind the stereotype that the French are crazy about the sport.

The little information that I was able to garner is that he was born in Kyrgyzstan, (at a place called Kim-Niemcy … but I have to admit that I have absolutely no idea where that is), in April, 1974, (there seems to be some doubt – some of the Cycling sites state his birthday as being the 17th, but Wikipedia has it on the 18th.  Even the Kyrgyz based sites didn’t give a date of birth).

I also discovered that he his married, has three children and does a fair amount of training up around Lake Issyk Kul and that he has been cycling professionally since 1999, when he was 25.  He has cycled for German, Polish, Iranian and Kazakh and Chinese (Taiwan) teams.

He has appeared in three Olympic Games; won five silver medals at the Asian Games; four-times been champion of Asia in road racing; won the Asian Cup on the track, twice been world champion in Group “B”, and also won many international cycling races – not to mention being the Kyrgyz national  champion every year since 2002, (except that is in 2006, when the competition doesn’t seem to have been held).

Despite what seems to be an impressive record, he doesn’t have a particularly high CQ.

CQ?!

Cycling Quotient.  OK … it was news to me as well.    Sportsmen seem to love statistics and the CQ-ranking is a world ranking of professional road cyclists, which based on their performances during the precious 12 months. Apparently it is an unofficial successor to the UCI-ranking which disappeared when the ProTour was introduced in 2005.

Wacker’s CQ is currently 47.  Hmmm … 47 … the number doesn’t actually tell us much unless we do a bit more research about what it stands for … but rather than go into all the details, let me say that it gives him a world ranking of 996, whereas  Philippe Gilbert of Germany, who is ranked No.1, has a CQ of 3150.

On the other hand, apparently Kyrgyzstan currently has a combined CQ of 76, (putting them in 70th place out of 127), which means that (a) Wacker’s 47 represents the bulk of this and (b) there are some other Kyrgyz ranking cyclists out there … Hmmm …. Maybe I am going to have to do a bit more research.

 

Tags: For_the_Record, Kyrgyzstan, People, Sport