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.

A nose for victory.

Over the past decade or so the French have been widely criticized for their lackluster results on the big international cycling scene. And it's pretty hard to argue with that criticism. The French haven't been able to get out of their own way in the world's biggest races. The French haven't had a "good" rider since Laurent Jalabert retired. Jalabert, a true legend through and through, was still not a Tour rider. And when your nation invented the Tour, and in many respects cycling, it's hard not to have a GC contender for such a long period of time. But times are changing for the French. In 2010 the French have got more victories than they had got for many years. The international peloton has been doing double takes around the world, as the red-white and blue boys find themselves atop a poduim, trying to remember what you do up there.

Sylvain Chavanel has hugely improved since he left France to go race for the Belgies, but the rider with the most talent is clearly Pierrick Fedrigo. With a handful of solid Tour de France stages to his name, a few national champion jerseys filling his suit-case, and more recently a stage and GC win in the Criterium International in Corsica ahead of an excuse-filled Lance Armstrong and a temporarily human looking Alberto Contador. Where's Pierrick's success come from? Aerodynamics!

According to team owner Jean Rene Bernaudeau, the team had never done wind-tunnel testing until this year. A step down from the Pro Tour to the Pro Conti' ranks meant a change in bike sponsor for the Bbox team, and Italian bike manufacturer Colnago put the French team through it's first wind-tunnel paces. The results from the wind-tunnel sessions showed that Pierrick had an amazing natural aerodynamic advantage over the average cyclist. The results were finally narrowd down to his rather large and pointy nose, giving him data similar to that of a Dassault Mirage fighter plane. After the findings, Jean Rene Bernaudeau said "Un pif comme, ca, c'est pas facile a trouver dans le peloton de nos jours" (a schnoz like that isn't easy to come across in today's peloton).

Evidently, the French really do have a nose for victory. The FFC (French Cycling Federation) have recently started including nose measurements as well as the standard VO2Max and Wattage tests to their national team selection criteria for Junior and Espoir riders.

Rainbow curse hits Cadel well

Evans’ curse of the rainbow jersey. Some say that the curse isn’t affecting the short Australian. I disagree. Most world champs have a very successful career before they win the rainbow jersey, then their luck gets flipped around once they pull on the rainbow stripes. Cadel’s luck has flipped around since pulling on the jersey. He never won anything before, and was plagued with bad luck the poor bugger. His luck has clearly flipped now, he’s riding well and winning big things. The jersey affects your luck, and Cadel’s luck has clearly been affected! Lucky for him, he was unlucky before he had the jersey.

Quiet Americans!

American’s…UGH.

The other day I got to come home for a couple days between races. As much as I like racing, I also love returning home to Belgium for a few days.

I went for a recovery ride the day after returning home. I stopped by my old team mate’s house in Ghent to see if he wanted to come out and play, but his wife informed me he hadn’t made it home and was still stuck in an airport somewhere waiting for the Volcano cloud to clear. So I headed out for a couple hours along the canal path just out of Ghent. As I rolled along, I could hear a group of loud American’s coming up behind me. There they were, 5 or 6 of them, with one Garmin guy and a bunch of other yanks. They all had their big helmets on and half the guys were obviously young American amateurs fully decked out in their overly matching club kit, and clearly well-underdressed with their black sock half way up to their knees. Apparently the American’s think this is “Euro” to have tall black sock. I think Lance once wore black socks in one stage, and so everyone thinks it’s cool now. As they passed me, I was deafened by their loud laughter, childish giggling and obviously American accents shooting through the calm and quietness of the Belgian countryside. Could someone please teach these guys to keep their voices down?!

The sport is cleaner, I’m positive!

Frei, Fuyu Li, Gavazzi... What’s with the recent load of positive dope tests? We keep being told that the sport is cleaner than it once was… it’s not that long ago that every doping story was a major headline around the world, creating rather undesirable waves through our cycling world… these recent events seem to have barely raised an eyebrow. Over the past 5 or so years, the sport really has been cleaned up, our cycling world HAS changed… I’m positive!

hidden guys in the darkness of the cycling system

I am currently at the Vuelta a Mexico, where I have come across a young Armenian chap by the name of Tigran Korkotyan. Actually this isn’t the first time I’ve come across this young man. Tigran rides for the small, totally unheard of pro team CKT TMIT-Champion system. This team is allegedly out of Switzerland, but seem to do 5 races a year, a mainly in Asia. A mate of mine on that unheard of team was telling me about this guy, and my little brain made a link. An American amateur friend of mine had mentioned him because he came across him in shitty little race in France a few weeks ago, where he finish in the 40s wearing some local French club jersey… You gotta love this side of the sport of cycling. Get yourself 2 different licenses, ride in secret under 2 different jerseys. Remember VDB riding under a fake name in Italian citizen races a couple years ago? Love it!