Andre Tchmil

Andre Tchmil came into professional cycling through the induction of the Alfa Lum team, an Italian-formed squad made up of predominately Russian cyclists in the late 1980's. It took many years before Tchmil made his mark though - long after teamates like Dmitri Konychev, Ivan Ivanov, Valerij Saitov and Vladimir Poulinkov had settled into the cash-rich circuit from their Italian base. Tchmil soon found his niche in the one-day classics of northern Europe, where he learned quickly from the experiences of Roger DeVlaeminck and Johan Musseuw - respectively manager and star-rider of the GB-MG team.

1994 saw Tchmil win a murderously difficult Paris-Roubaix - against Museeuw - and set himself up as a sure-fire winner of more great classics in the coming years. In fact it took more than three years before the best of Tchmil was realized - with victories in Paris-Tours (1997), Milan San Remo (1999), and the Tour of Flanders (2000) establishing Tchmil as possibly the best-ever cycling export from eastern Europe. His rivalry with Museeuw became legendary, with each man determined to out-do the other in any major race that they rode. Whereas Museeuw was both strong and extremely cunning, Tchmil was simply strong. Yet his greatest wins - in San Remo and Flanders - were out of Museeuw's very own repertoire...and fired their competition to higher levels. Tchmil's strength finally started to wane after 2000 - albeit after having won the season-long World Cup competition - and he retired suddenly in the summer of 2002, immediately after an opportunistic stage-win in the Tour of Belgium. The peloton's respect of Tchmil was summed up by the actions of Museeuw himself - who rushed over to congratulate the Russian as soon as he'd heard the news.