Bright light from above!

A big bright sunny thing came out to great us at the Giro today, that confused everyone. And Robby McEwan still isn't back... better, but...

What are you thinking?

What was Cadel thinking when he started the field sprint in today’s stage? The little climber from just outside of Melbourne was solo on the right hand side of the road, wasting energy going for the sprint. Cadel is looking beyond strong at the moment. Apparently he had to do a lot of the work to close down a gap that HTC and Vino and his boys got in the last 30k. None of us had a clue what was going on at that stage. Everyone was cross-eyed focusing on the wheel in front and endless curbs that came flying at you left and right on yet another miserable and wet day.

Speaking of wet, apparently it rained today at the Tour of California. Not even a date change from Feb to May can get them the sun everyone expects when they find out they are headed to California for a bike race. In other news, some of the boys were racing in the Tour of Picardie, and the women have just kicked off the Tour de L’Aude, but one really cares at the moment because all eyes are on the Italian skies and the Tour of Crashifornia.

Only in America!

Velonews today ran a story about a timing confusion at the Tour of the Gila. I have myself done a little racing in America, and never have I come across a less efficient bunch of officials. Only in America could the officials argue back and forth between timing issues which would never have been issues in the first place. Laden with their white and black striped prison suits, the US cycling officials, rarely seem to know much about cycling in the first place, and despite having a vast array of technology for timing and finish line results, somehow manage to mess it up.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/05/news/tour-of-the-gila-final-podium-re-adjusted-dave-zabriskie-gets-back-on-the-podium_115680

Dungkerque

Well here's some excitement in the world of cycling. The 4 days of DUNGkerque (as the riders call it) is about the least exciting race on the calendar. For one thing it's held in the unbelievably boring and dull part of northern France that everyone hates going to. The area is dull, gray and industrial. The racing is about the same, dull, gray and... well, not industrial, but pretty uneventful to say the least. In the past, some riders have been sent to the this race by their team, after much protest they are forced to go anyway, so uninterested in the event, they ride the first 2km of the first stage and then pull out and head home early. Yipee for the 4 days of Dungkerque, which will probably go unnoticed anyway, as all the real riders are heading a little further south to a little local race called the Giro d'Italia, thank God!

Constantino Zaballa wins on old Crap

I must say I don’t recognize Zaballa’s team kit, and to be honest it looks like a local village club kit from some tiny Spanish farmer town. I know I’ve come across Zaballa somewhere before, in some race, and I’m pretty sure he used to race for one of the world’s bigger teams, but I can’t remember who. Regardless, Zaballa took the bull by the horns in Asturias on Sunday by winning the final stage in true hardman fashion, solo!

The keen eye out there will have noticed that Zaballa won the race on a bike sporting the old, 10speed Campagnolo equipment. So while the average overweight wanabee cyclist is out there getting all the latest and lightest equipment to get dropped on the local Sunday spin, Zaballa and his buddies are out there winning races on the world stage with old equipment. And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. CSC had the old 9speed Dura Ace for a whole season after all the other teams in the peloton (as well as all the overweight weight-weenies out there) had moved over to the newer 10speed Dura Ace. Lance said it himself, “it’s not about the bike, and as Zaballa’s legs clearly stated on Sunday, stop being a dork and ride your bike!

No Class for Podium Girl

Thank goodness for Levi Leipheimer’s and Darren Lill’s classy rides at this week’s Tour of the Gila. Sadly that’s about all the class we saw, as there was a definite lack of class when it came to certain aspects of the organization. Clearly a little “overweight” in certain areas, and with the big ugly tattoo dominating the scene, this young lady would be better suited in a dark corner of a Harley Davidson biker-bar than on a podium. When you compare podium photos of the Tour of the Gila to some of the bigger races, one word jumps to mind. “Class” (or lack thereof).

Who the hell are you?

Who?

Have you ever heard of Richie Porte? No, neither have we! Or rather, neither HAD we!

You gotta love it when a "no-hoper" shines. The 25 year old from Down-Under scraped his beer drinking ass off the beach to sit atop a list of results. Give a whole new meaning to the term "a who's who" of cycling!

Richie's performance did really prove the importance of Specialized's Shiv TT bike over their old Tri-Wanaby-TT Transition.

World cycling round up of the week

Lets take a look at what’s going on worldwide in the sport of cycling at the moment:

A bunch of unheard of riders are riding around Asia at the Jalajahahaha-Malasia and the Tour of Korea, where the Asian riders are doing what they do best: chopping everyone up in corners while grunting. America is getting all excited about a series of freak-show, circus displays they call “speed week” which a few of them actually think matter. Lance Armstrong is doing his best Russian National Team impression by going back to the team van and pulling on a totally random jersey after he’s been told he can’t participate in a given event. Only Lance has gone one step further and brought along a handful of other ineligible riders to go play “big fish in a small pond” at the Tour of Gila. Morocco is about to kick off yet another seemingly pointless series of UCI races on the African continent, Australia is showing the world how truly up-side-down they are by racing in the middle of winter with the Tour of Canberra, which according to the start list looks more like a cyclosportif than a real bike race. The Canadians… have no bike races, the Italians are doing their hair, the Spanish are hiding away from the authorities timing themselves up one climb, the British are… surprising numerous in the pro ranks, the French are nowhere to be seen, the Belgians think the season officially ended with LBL and are down the pub, and the rest of the cycling world is involved in a real bike race at Romandie, where they are forced to duke it out with parked cars due to an odd law in Switzerland that forbids them to remove parked cars from the road for a bike race. But at the end of the day, all that matters is that Mark Cavendish has won 2 bikes races, so screw you!

Un Vino Grand Cru

Cleary good old “Vini” is back. His recent Trentino win, follow by a fine performance in Liege has left a few people with a somewhat bitter taste in their mouths.

I’m not too sure what you are doing at a bike race if you are only going to boo people. If that’s how you feel, stay at home and watch some other sport you can claim to be an expert in without getting off the couch!

Vino admittedly has been a shady character, but why does he get more abuse than others? The press (in particular the French press who were quite hard on Vino on Sunday) acted quite differently when Virenque returned to win Paris-Tours. How about everyone’s favourit “clean-boy” David Millar, who’s on a so called, self proclaimed “clean crusade”. The list of riders who have returned to the sport after serving time is way too long for my little fingers to type. What if everyone starting booing the journalists?

If you want to boo, stay home and boo the TV!

Nature Valley Petit Prix

Nature valley announced today that it would not allow TT bikes in its stage race. They claimed they also have a time cut in the Prologue TT to prevent riders from taking it easy and saving themselves for the evening criterium.

Do you think someone should let them know that Time trials are an integral part of cycling stage races, that it’s a great opportunity to showcase sponsor equipment, and that Criteriums are traditionally a mere summer show-piece? Allow TT equipment, and scrap the Criterium? Either put on a real road stage in the afternoon, or make the morning TT longer. Make the event a real bike race instead of further “downgrading” it.