Well, it's been a hectic year for us Schlecklanders, we all had to move our loyalties from SaxoBlank onto the new team, and we had barely had time to get used to the new kit before we sadly lost one of our new team members, Wouter Weylandt.
It seems as though we had hardly had time to recover from that before the Tour was upon us, and of course we had the immense thrill of Andy and Franky taking two podium places, balanced by the disappointment that we had all wanted Andy to be on the top step. (*pets Andy: "there, there, next time."*)
But then things all went spectacularly wrong, with the leaked news that Leopard Trek was a dead duck, and was being taken over by RadioShack, a team which unfortunately brings with them connotations of past misdemeanours, and the present iron rule of their current DS. They also bring with them a feeling of obligation to support their particular charity, another reason that many of us Schlecklanders have not opened our arms to them.
Still, we won't have much longer to wait before we see the new kit, the new operation, the new team: and let's all hope that it's going to be a fun, thrilling, and enjoyable new year for the new team.
So Merry Christmas to all Schlecklanders, past, present and future: Good Luck to all RadioShack-Nissan-Trek riders, old and new: and let's hope we all enjoy a successful 2012.
Obviously there will be a bit of a gap in blogging for a few days, there's this little celebration thingy that we have to do, but I hope you all have a good time, and I look forward to your merry comments on future posts.
Coug
(Virtual Hugs all round)
Thursday 22 December 2011
Wednesday 21 December 2011
Reprieve for my work shirts.. the O lives on.
Thanks to Boulderado for prompting me to have a look at the old Leopard Trek website, which is still there and still called Leopard Trek. I've rather lost heart in it lately, now that the races are over, and I haven't been there in weeks.
But look!
Ooh, look, a tempting link, I wonder where it will take us?
Answer: to what appears to be a new website, now called Radioshack Nissan Trek. Oh dear, I might have typed that incorrectly, darn, I will have to check the press release again... anyway, here is what you get, just the one page for now... annoyingly, they have remembered to block the dir list so I can't have a sneaky peek to see if there are any other pages being made (you can often get a lot of extra information like that, particularly when companies are lazy and don't tidy up their websites properly.).
Whoo hooo and yay, the O logo appears to be staying - well, for the time being, at least.
My work shirts will live on next summer!
And for the benefit of the curious, this photo shows the backs of the shirts, not the fronts.
Not even I am prepared to wear the logo slap bang in the middle of my modest chest!
No, the logos are on the back, so while I am hard at work in the summer, everyone passing by can see them. And as I walk around my local supermarket, passers-by can look in amazement as I walk past them, and could - if only there was another single Leopard Trek fan in the whole of South England - call out "Hey! You must be Coug!"
So far, it has utterly failed to happen...
And let's not forget a minor grumble that once again, January: once again, special invitation to a launch; once again, it's in Luxembourg..... technically, I don't go back to work until the 9th, so I suppose that, if I were really keen, I could take that lovely new passport of mine and just fly over there. But I'm still not sure if I'm going to be supporting the Shack, or just supporting Our Boys. So I think I'll save the money, and use it to go over to Belgium for one of the spring classics instead.
And now the bad news, the old RadioShack site is also still going:
...so there is still a chance that we will be lumbered with their ugly ole' red and black blobby site.
I'm not quite sure if this is sinister or not: it's entirely possible that they will leave up both the old sites, for the benefit of old fans, then quietly take them down after a few months.
I suppose it could be said that it's too early to take down the two old sites, as the year hasn't quite finished yet. Oh well, we will see.
Finally, with thanks to Leelu for reminding me about it: on Twitter, we've had a sneaky peek at what could well be the new GreenEdge kit:
Well, what else could it possibly be?
It's the GreenEdge swoopy logo all right, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Leopard Trek kit: the bike is a Scott, and they are sponsoring GreenEdge, so I think we can believe in this one!
Unless there is a very, very keen fan somewhere in Australia who has his own screen-printing set-up......
But look!
Ooh, look, a tempting link, I wonder where it will take us?
Answer: to what appears to be a new website, now called Radioshack Nissan Trek. Oh dear, I might have typed that incorrectly, darn, I will have to check the press release again... anyway, here is what you get, just the one page for now... annoyingly, they have remembered to block the dir list so I can't have a sneaky peek to see if there are any other pages being made (you can often get a lot of extra information like that, particularly when companies are lazy and don't tidy up their websites properly.).
Whoo hooo and yay, the O logo appears to be staying - well, for the time being, at least.
And for the benefit of the curious, this photo shows the backs of the shirts, not the fronts.
Not even I am prepared to wear the logo slap bang in the middle of my modest chest!
No, the logos are on the back, so while I am hard at work in the summer, everyone passing by can see them. And as I walk around my local supermarket, passers-by can look in amazement as I walk past them, and could - if only there was another single Leopard Trek fan in the whole of South England - call out "Hey! You must be Coug!"
So far, it has utterly failed to happen...
And let's not forget a minor grumble that once again, January: once again, special invitation to a launch; once again, it's in Luxembourg..... technically, I don't go back to work until the 9th, so I suppose that, if I were really keen, I could take that lovely new passport of mine and just fly over there. But I'm still not sure if I'm going to be supporting the Shack, or just supporting Our Boys. So I think I'll save the money, and use it to go over to Belgium for one of the spring classics instead.
And now the bad news, the old RadioShack site is also still going:
I'm not quite sure if this is sinister or not: it's entirely possible that they will leave up both the old sites, for the benefit of old fans, then quietly take them down after a few months.
I suppose it could be said that it's too early to take down the two old sites, as the year hasn't quite finished yet. Oh well, we will see.
Finally, with thanks to Leelu for reminding me about it: on Twitter, we've had a sneaky peek at what could well be the new GreenEdge kit:
Well, what else could it possibly be?
It's the GreenEdge swoopy logo all right, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Leopard Trek kit: the bike is a Scott, and they are sponsoring GreenEdge, so I think we can believe in this one!
Unless there is a very, very keen fan somewhere in Australia who has his own screen-printing set-up......
Thursday 15 December 2011
RaidoSchleck
"Who?" I hear you ask.
Apparently OGL has only just realised the obvious terrible pun, the one we all discarded months ago, that the new team name could be RadioSchleck rather than RadioShack.
Andy! Where have you been?? Have you not been reading this blog properly? *shakes head in disappointment.*
Perhaps he's been spending his spare time with TinkerJil instead of stalking around on the internet... mind you, there's all those wasted hours, stuck in airports, or on team buses, you'd think he'd find time to keep up to date.... oh all right, I know he doesn't actually read it! *waves cheerfully, though, just in case...*
Anyway, we all thought of RadioSchleck, aaaages ago: then we went to RaNT, which was good for a giggle for several weeks, then we got the whole business about the UCI stating the only two sponsor names are allowed. So it would only be RaN, which wasn't nearly as funny.
Somehow, though, Andy has missed out on RadioSchleck - which I suppose is a tribute to the modesty and general niceness of the Schleck brother, don't you think?
A couple of days ago, though, a new player popped up on Twitter: presumably taking the place of Ken Sommer (*pulls glum face - we liked Ken, he occasionally used to respond to our tweets, I bet this new Shack guy doesn't). The name is Lee Applbaum (is it just me, or is there an "e" missing from that name?) who seems to be the Marketing Manager for the Shack. Oh, I beg his pardon, "Chief Marketing Officer".
So, this Lee Applbaum - who I assume is a fella - sent out a couple of tweets on the subject of the team name. Andy seems to have been completely oblivious to it, until these tweets, which I find very sweet.
Here they are, and I have put them in the right order for ease of reading:
Well, it shows he has a sense of humour, which is a good thing.
Andy responded:
Ah, isn't it nice to see that Luxenglish appearing again? I was particularly amused by the use of the French idee rather than idea: by the hilarious mis-spelling of Radio as Raido, which does sound just ever so slightly like something you spray on unwanted fleas; and of course, the spelling of Schleck without the first "c". Oh, and I'm not even mentioning the missing apostrophe.
Ok, ok, he tweets in a hurry! Seriously, we don't mind, Andy, pet, we're just very happy to hear from you these days.
So there we have it, the new team name is RaidoShleck, please note correct pronunciation as per this press release that was issued by Trek earlier this week.
Apparently OGL has only just realised the obvious terrible pun, the one we all discarded months ago, that the new team name could be RadioSchleck rather than RadioShack.
Andy! Where have you been?? Have you not been reading this blog properly? *shakes head in disappointment.*
Perhaps he's been spending his spare time with TinkerJil instead of stalking around on the internet... mind you, there's all those wasted hours, stuck in airports, or on team buses, you'd think he'd find time to keep up to date.... oh all right, I know he doesn't actually read it! *waves cheerfully, though, just in case...*
Anyway, we all thought of RadioSchleck, aaaages ago: then we went to RaNT, which was good for a giggle for several weeks, then we got the whole business about the UCI stating the only two sponsor names are allowed. So it would only be RaN, which wasn't nearly as funny.
Somehow, though, Andy has missed out on RadioSchleck - which I suppose is a tribute to the modesty and general niceness of the Schleck brother, don't you think?
A couple of days ago, though, a new player popped up on Twitter: presumably taking the place of Ken Sommer (*pulls glum face - we liked Ken, he occasionally used to respond to our tweets, I bet this new Shack guy doesn't). The name is Lee Applbaum (is it just me, or is there an "e" missing from that name?) who seems to be the Marketing Manager for the Shack. Oh, I beg his pardon, "Chief Marketing Officer".
So, this Lee Applbaum - who I assume is a fella - sent out a couple of tweets on the subject of the team name. Andy seems to have been completely oblivious to it, until these tweets, which I find very sweet.
Here they are, and I have put them in the right order for ease of reading:
Andy responded:
Ah, isn't it nice to see that Luxenglish appearing again? I was particularly amused by the use of the French idee rather than idea: by the hilarious mis-spelling of Radio as Raido, which does sound just ever so slightly like something you spray on unwanted fleas; and of course, the spelling of Schleck without the first "c". Oh, and I'm not even mentioning the missing apostrophe.
Ok, ok, he tweets in a hurry! Seriously, we don't mind, Andy, pet, we're just very happy to hear from you these days.
So there we have it, the new team name is RaidoShleck, please note correct pronunciation as per this press release that was issued by Trek earlier this week.
Monday 5 December 2011
RadioAndySchleckTrekNissan are IN!
Phew, big sigh of relief, I have just come in and checked the cycling news, and at last, we have a licence, as do GreenEdge.
The UCI are calling the team RadioShack-Nissan, so alas, no more RaNT acronym, looks like we're stuck with RSN which doesn't really convert easily into aninsult pet-name. I suspect we are going to be calling them The Shack....
But I'm telling you all now, I am NOT going to be shouting "Up the R's ! " I won't! I won't!
The full list of teams will be released on the 12th, which is next Monday: and already there are subtle attempts to lure Leopard fans to other teams - thanks to @DivingCaroline for bringing this to my attention:
Clever, huh?
Their blurb describes it as being "white, black and Blizzard Blue".
Good to know that shade of blue has a name.
They also waffle on about how this will make them stand out in the peloton: hmm, they are betting that Leopard are going to be shoved into red-and-black Shack kit, aren't they?
They're also copying the idea of having the riders' names on the back.
Now I am a big fan of this idea, but I prefer the way Sky have done it, with the rider's name along the side panel, so that it is clearly legible when they are in the cycling position. Great for camerabike shots.
Still no news on the new Shack kit: but Mr Bruyneel has issued the team roster, so at least those questions have been answered. Now we just have to learn the faces of all the Shack riders! Well, all but one: there's no point trying to learn the face of poor Markel Iriza, as he did a major face-splat in training and wasn't able to go to the first meet-the-team outing in Calpe (to which I was not invited, surprisingly) due to a broken jaw, broken finger, and multiple stitches in his eyebrow and lip. Ouch!
I'm not quite prepared to publish the photo of him, all stitched and bruised, but if you follow this link, you can check it out for yourself.
Other news today? Andy says he might do the Giro after all. This could be a good thing, especially if Contador doesn't do it, and if Andy can therefore concentrate on winning the race, instead of beating Contador...
I don't mind what he does, as long as he gets lots of coverage: so, Attack, Andy, Attack! There, that's my tactical advice for the year.
More Other News: Jakob has been told to lose weight! Oh no, those dimples are at risk.... Kim Andersen says that he needs to shift a few kilos in order to get up the mountains better, and is dangling a carrot in front of him in the form of leadership of the Giro team, if he loses the weight. Otherwise he'll be sent to the Tour as a super-domestique again. So brace yourself, Leelu and Nim, for a skinny Jakob.
Here he is at the Calpe meet'n'greet session, sucking in his cheeks to try to look thinner.
The UCI are calling the team RadioShack-Nissan, so alas, no more RaNT acronym, looks like we're stuck with RSN which doesn't really convert easily into an
But I'm telling you all now, I am NOT going to be shouting "Up the R's ! " I won't! I won't!
The full list of teams will be released on the 12th, which is next Monday: and already there are subtle attempts to lure Leopard fans to other teams - thanks to @DivingCaroline for bringing this to my attention:
Their blurb describes it as being "white, black and Blizzard Blue".
Good to know that shade of blue has a name.
They also waffle on about how this will make them stand out in the peloton: hmm, they are betting that Leopard are going to be shoved into red-and-black Shack kit, aren't they?
They're also copying the idea of having the riders' names on the back.
Now I am a big fan of this idea, but I prefer the way Sky have done it, with the rider's name along the side panel, so that it is clearly legible when they are in the cycling position. Great for camerabike shots.
Still no news on the new Shack kit: but Mr Bruyneel has issued the team roster, so at least those questions have been answered. Now we just have to learn the faces of all the Shack riders! Well, all but one: there's no point trying to learn the face of poor Markel Iriza, as he did a major face-splat in training and wasn't able to go to the first meet-the-team outing in Calpe (to which I was not invited, surprisingly) due to a broken jaw, broken finger, and multiple stitches in his eyebrow and lip. Ouch!
I'm not quite prepared to publish the photo of him, all stitched and bruised, but if you follow this link, you can check it out for yourself.
Other news today? Andy says he might do the Giro after all. This could be a good thing, especially if Contador doesn't do it, and if Andy can therefore concentrate on winning the race, instead of beating Contador...
I don't mind what he does, as long as he gets lots of coverage: so, Attack, Andy, Attack! There, that's my tactical advice for the year.
More Other News: Jakob has been told to lose weight! Oh no, those dimples are at risk.... Kim Andersen says that he needs to shift a few kilos in order to get up the mountains better, and is dangling a carrot in front of him in the form of leadership of the Giro team, if he loses the weight. Otherwise he'll be sent to the Tour as a super-domestique again. So brace yourself, Leelu and Nim, for a skinny Jakob.
Here he is at the Calpe meet'n'greet session, sucking in his cheeks to try to look thinner.
Friday 2 December 2011
Tour of Colorado
Oh all right, the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, don't be so picky!
And yes, I know it was aaaaaages ago, but I didn't get around to writing about it at the time, and now there's not much to write about, so I thought I'd present you with my thoughts on the subject, under the general heading of "better late than never".
We didn't get much coverage in the UK, and theoretically we should not have been particularly interested anyway, as it's not a UCI race and therefore doesn't contribute any points, and as we all know, we need points to secure a Pro Team place.
This race is what Cav would therefore call a shitsmall race, an expression which I would never use in the real world, but which is now in everyday use when LLB and I are watching or discussing the cycling. But, and it's a big but, Our Glorious Leader was in it! So one of us (that would be me) was anxiously hanging on for any glimpse of the action that Eurosport would deign to show to us, and trying to be cool about it to avoid being sent back to Andyhab, having just about convinced LLB that I'm Over Him. ("He's soooo last year")
The first, absolutely first, thing I have to say about Colorado is WOW! The scenery! It's so big!
If you didn't get a chance to see much of the coverage, do take the time to go to Steephill TV and scroll through their superb Large pictures.... at the end of the page, click on the "Stage 1 photos" etc to move to the next stage.
But after raving about the scenery: hmm, not quite so keen on the loooong straight roads. Kinda dull to cycle on, kinda dull to watch. A bit like watching the slowest ever TTT.
But oh! That scenery!
So, The first bit we really saw was Stage 2, and we were quite distracted from the scenery by the truly terrible graphics. For a start, they appeared to have been done using some software found for free on the internet, and apparently they were designed by someone in the 1970s.... most annoying was the km/miles to go graphic, which bobbed out from the left, flicked between miles and kms, then bobbed away. Then bobbed out again... etc. It was maddening!
For heavens' sake, we all know that the USA (like the UK) works in miles not kms, but -
a) we're all perfectly accustomed to watching racing with kms to go, and
b) if you really think it was necessary to include miles, you could have presented them at the same time, not flickering alternately with the kms.
I can't tell you how many times I glanced at the corner of the screen and just read the number, not the km/miles indication, and got the wrong one! Right, end of grumbles about terrible graphics.
"Andy Schleck's looking worried" said the commentator. (One of us sprang to attention, invisibly) Well, we would have liked to have seen that for ourselves, but instead we were presented with a Monet-style impressionistic jigsaw instead. I don't know what was wrong with the TV company's transmission equipment, but the picture quality was terrible! Absolutely dreadful, we kept losing the picture - or rather, it kept freezing in this strange way. Mind you, some of them were almost lovely, in a way....
But then it all went black... then suddenly we went to a different camera: no break-up, but the picture was all fuzzy and out of focus. No! No! That's no good! Go to Helicopter-Cam! Aaagh, he's miles out of position, can't even see the race! Go to Camera Five! No! That's the black one! Go to Camera Three! Oh blimey, we're back to the broken frozen one again.
This was very frustrating.
Suddenly the view was clear - we were watching the riders cycle along a sort of dirt-track. Boulderado, you probably know the one I mean.... nothing special, we thought, until the camera started to pull back... and back... and back... until it turned into a tiny, invisible ribbon of track clinging to the side of an immense one-in-one slope, with no safety rails at all, and no reason to stop rolling, if you were unlucky enough to fall off it, until you hit the bottom, about a week and a half later. it was a staggering piece of scenery, and I can't find a single photo of it.
In my notes from the race, I have the comment: "Hateful fans on Independence Pass". I am seeing this more and more at big cycle races, the way the fans push closer and closer as the riders near a summit, and the way they hit the riders, wave flags in their faces, run alongside them (god, the riders must soooo hate that!) and so on.
I really don't like that - cycling fans used to be excited and enthusiastic, yes, but they are starting to turn into football hooligans, and it's starting to get unpleasant. I'm sure you all remember me commenting earlier in the year at Andy straight-arming a fan away from himself, and of course there was the Contador Incident, where he slapped a spectator who was dressed as a doctor and was waving an enormous syringe. This is all quite unpleasant stuff, and does not help to promote cycling as a gentlemanly sport.
Anyway, enough of that: there was another hugely amusing graphic, provided by the TV company: when the commentators were talking about a particular rider (especially an American one, hem hem) they put up a graphic showing the name of the rider along with his mug-shot, which is normal enough: but they found a way to add a pointer to the graphic, which was linked to the rider on the screen. So when the rider moved around the peloton, the point of the pointer went with him.
This was hilarious, especially when the rider was bobbing up and down on the pedals, as the pointer had to bob up and down as well.
This lead to some speculation between LLB and I, about ways to make races more exciting visually: we'd like them to make a cartoon explosion, and to link it to every bidon that is thrown out.
I think I've mentioned before (possibly in the Alex Dowsett Incident) that whenever bidons are lobbed out of the peloton, LLB and I make wheeeee! Puwhhhhhhhh! noises as they arc up, then hit the ground. So it would be great if the TV coverage could include cartoon explosions for us.
Well, we thought it was funny.
One other point of note in this race (well, for me) was the performance of TeeJay Van Garderen, or "Bum-fluff" as I call him, who calls himself, on Twitter, a Cougar Hunter. Humph. Well, the so-called Cougar Hunter did quite well in this stage, but Big George Hincapie showed him who's boss, on my behalf. Thanks, George.
At this point there was an inexplicable jump from Stage 2 coverage to Stage 6, with nothing inbetween. Andy's great breakaway, his blow up, we missed it all. Apparently he was awarded the Combatative Rider jersey, but we didn't get to see it. I do hope it wasn't the awful orange burger-flipper jersey.
Oh dear, it was.
Never mind, to make up for it, here's a nice pic from good old Steephill TV:
And finally, this photo - below - just made me screech with laughter (oh dear, am I such a horrible person? Yes, I most certainly am!)
Tear your eyes away from the cyclist, and look at the spectator behind. Yes, dear, you're wearing your lovely pink racer-back top, ooh, look at you all sporty and in-the-right-gear, you even kept your cycle helmet on to prove that you're a cyclist too: but oh! the bra! No! No! NO!
If you wear a racer back top, you wear a racer back bra, ok? Simple rule! Not even a fashion rule, it's a suitable-clothing rule. You wear a racer back to stop the straps slipping down, right? Otherwise you'd just wear a singlet or running vest, whatever you call them. But if your aim is to avoid straps slipping down, then you need to wear a bra whose straps don't slip down, too!
I don't know why I find this quite so hilarious - I mean, girls show their bras all the time these days, why, think of TinkerJil and her see-through top. But she wore a black bra underneath: Correct! If she'd worn a white bra, it would have been sooooo tacky.
Likewise this girly should be wearing black underwear, or even pink: not white, and there's something about the style of that oh-so-sensible, industrial-strength bra that just makes me think Playtex Cross Your Heart.
[Note for non-UK readers, Playtex made really, really sturdy bras and corsets back in the 50s and 60s, the sort that us modern girlies would not be seen dead in. "Foundation garments" or "brassieres", they would have been called, nothing as light and insubstantial as "bra".]
OK, enough of that, back to the racing.
But staying on the subject of clothing, LLB and I were quite intrigued by the Rabobank kit: they seemed to have at least three different jerseys within their team. Of course, I can't find any photos to illustrate this, so you'll have to take my word for it... I mean, I know that team jerseys come in different materials: Leopard have solid jerseys for normal races, jerseys made mainly of "net" effect fabric for the hot races, jerseys that are part solid, part net for those awkward in-between days etc - but generally, they are all printed the same.
But the Rabobank jerseys had very slightly different designs on them - the blue and orange blocks didn't line up in the same way, for example. This was most intriguing. Mind you, remember how we laughed at the new SaxoBank kit, with the eagles, some of which had, er, longer necks than the others?
So what's the story? Do the teams order a new batch of kit every month? Do they take the opportunity of a new order to make a few minor tweaks to the design each time? Do they order from different suppliers each time? (I thought that clothing companies were often sponsors, ie Craft, so you'd think that would not be the case.) Do the clothing companies not keep "patterns" or "blocks" of the kit, do they re-do the layout every time there is a new order? Are some of them actually cheap knock-offs, run off in some back-street sweat-shop to save costs?
Questions, questions.
Another question has to be Why are all the big teams here, at a non-UCI race, at an unfamiliar altitude? In the case of Frankie and Andy, we thought it was probably to do with Trek: if a sponsor says "we want you to be there" then I guess the management have to accommodate it?
So, Stage 6, we enter the Denver loop, and finally, finally! we get spectators - lots and lots and lots of them. Huge crowds! Fantastic! Now we can see why this race was referred to as being a challenge to the Vuelta - there's no comparison between this turn-out, and the strange zombie tour.
However, if Colorado want to beat the Vuelta, they really have to get their cameras and their commentary sorted out. On the little footage that we did get, we were constantly hearing the commentators complaining that they had no information on, for example, who had been taken off to hospital. Or who was in the break. Or that their start numbers didn't match the graphics. Or what the gaps were.
Well, there you have it, my comments on Colorado - with apologies for the lateness. And fingers crossed that the girly in The Bra does not turn out to be Elle......
And yes, I know it was aaaaaages ago, but I didn't get around to writing about it at the time, and now there's not much to write about, so I thought I'd present you with my thoughts on the subject, under the general heading of "better late than never".
We didn't get much coverage in the UK, and theoretically we should not have been particularly interested anyway, as it's not a UCI race and therefore doesn't contribute any points, and as we all know, we need points to secure a Pro Team place.
This race is what Cav would therefore call a shitsmall race, an expression which I would never use in the real world, but which is now in everyday use when LLB and I are watching or discussing the cycling. But, and it's a big but, Our Glorious Leader was in it! So one of us (that would be me) was anxiously hanging on for any glimpse of the action that Eurosport would deign to show to us, and trying to be cool about it to avoid being sent back to Andyhab, having just about convinced LLB that I'm Over Him. ("He's soooo last year")
The first, absolutely first, thing I have to say about Colorado is WOW! The scenery! It's so big!
If you didn't get a chance to see much of the coverage, do take the time to go to Steephill TV and scroll through their superb Large pictures.... at the end of the page, click on the "Stage 1 photos" etc to move to the next stage.
But after raving about the scenery: hmm, not quite so keen on the loooong straight roads. Kinda dull to cycle on, kinda dull to watch. A bit like watching the slowest ever TTT.
But oh! That scenery!
So, The first bit we really saw was Stage 2, and we were quite distracted from the scenery by the truly terrible graphics. For a start, they appeared to have been done using some software found for free on the internet, and apparently they were designed by someone in the 1970s.... most annoying was the km/miles to go graphic, which bobbed out from the left, flicked between miles and kms, then bobbed away. Then bobbed out again... etc. It was maddening!
For heavens' sake, we all know that the USA (like the UK) works in miles not kms, but -
a) we're all perfectly accustomed to watching racing with kms to go, and
b) if you really think it was necessary to include miles, you could have presented them at the same time, not flickering alternately with the kms.
I can't tell you how many times I glanced at the corner of the screen and just read the number, not the km/miles indication, and got the wrong one! Right, end of grumbles about terrible graphics.
"Andy Schleck's looking worried" said the commentator. (One of us sprang to attention, invisibly) Well, we would have liked to have seen that for ourselves, but instead we were presented with a Monet-style impressionistic jigsaw instead. I don't know what was wrong with the TV company's transmission equipment, but the picture quality was terrible! Absolutely dreadful, we kept losing the picture - or rather, it kept freezing in this strange way. Mind you, some of them were almost lovely, in a way....
But then it all went black... then suddenly we went to a different camera: no break-up, but the picture was all fuzzy and out of focus. No! No! That's no good! Go to Helicopter-Cam! Aaagh, he's miles out of position, can't even see the race! Go to Camera Five! No! That's the black one! Go to Camera Three! Oh blimey, we're back to the broken frozen one again.
This was very frustrating.
Suddenly the view was clear - we were watching the riders cycle along a sort of dirt-track. Boulderado, you probably know the one I mean.... nothing special, we thought, until the camera started to pull back... and back... and back... until it turned into a tiny, invisible ribbon of track clinging to the side of an immense one-in-one slope, with no safety rails at all, and no reason to stop rolling, if you were unlucky enough to fall off it, until you hit the bottom, about a week and a half later. it was a staggering piece of scenery, and I can't find a single photo of it.
In my notes from the race, I have the comment: "Hateful fans on Independence Pass". I am seeing this more and more at big cycle races, the way the fans push closer and closer as the riders near a summit, and the way they hit the riders, wave flags in their faces, run alongside them (god, the riders must soooo hate that!) and so on.
I really don't like that - cycling fans used to be excited and enthusiastic, yes, but they are starting to turn into football hooligans, and it's starting to get unpleasant. I'm sure you all remember me commenting earlier in the year at Andy straight-arming a fan away from himself, and of course there was the Contador Incident, where he slapped a spectator who was dressed as a doctor and was waving an enormous syringe. This is all quite unpleasant stuff, and does not help to promote cycling as a gentlemanly sport.
Anyway, enough of that: there was another hugely amusing graphic, provided by the TV company: when the commentators were talking about a particular rider (especially an American one, hem hem) they put up a graphic showing the name of the rider along with his mug-shot, which is normal enough: but they found a way to add a pointer to the graphic, which was linked to the rider on the screen. So when the rider moved around the peloton, the point of the pointer went with him.
This was hilarious, especially when the rider was bobbing up and down on the pedals, as the pointer had to bob up and down as well.
This lead to some speculation between LLB and I, about ways to make races more exciting visually: we'd like them to make a cartoon explosion, and to link it to every bidon that is thrown out.
I think I've mentioned before (possibly in the Alex Dowsett Incident) that whenever bidons are lobbed out of the peloton, LLB and I make wheeeee! Puwhhhhhhhh! noises as they arc up, then hit the ground. So it would be great if the TV coverage could include cartoon explosions for us.
Well, we thought it was funny.
One other point of note in this race (well, for me) was the performance of TeeJay Van Garderen, or "Bum-fluff" as I call him, who calls himself, on Twitter, a Cougar Hunter. Humph. Well, the so-called Cougar Hunter did quite well in this stage, but Big George Hincapie showed him who's boss, on my behalf. Thanks, George.
At this point there was an inexplicable jump from Stage 2 coverage to Stage 6, with nothing inbetween. Andy's great breakaway, his blow up, we missed it all. Apparently he was awarded the Combatative Rider jersey, but we didn't get to see it. I do hope it wasn't the awful orange burger-flipper jersey.
Oh dear, it was.
Never mind, to make up for it, here's a nice pic from good old Steephill TV:
And finally, this photo - below - just made me screech with laughter (oh dear, am I such a horrible person? Yes, I most certainly am!)
Tear your eyes away from the cyclist, and look at the spectator behind. Yes, dear, you're wearing your lovely pink racer-back top, ooh, look at you all sporty and in-the-right-gear, you even kept your cycle helmet on to prove that you're a cyclist too: but oh! the bra! No! No! NO!
If you wear a racer back top, you wear a racer back bra, ok? Simple rule! Not even a fashion rule, it's a suitable-clothing rule. You wear a racer back to stop the straps slipping down, right? Otherwise you'd just wear a singlet or running vest, whatever you call them. But if your aim is to avoid straps slipping down, then you need to wear a bra whose straps don't slip down, too!
I don't know why I find this quite so hilarious - I mean, girls show their bras all the time these days, why, think of TinkerJil and her see-through top. But she wore a black bra underneath: Correct! If she'd worn a white bra, it would have been sooooo tacky.
Likewise this girly should be wearing black underwear, or even pink: not white, and there's something about the style of that oh-so-sensible, industrial-strength bra that just makes me think Playtex Cross Your Heart.
[Note for non-UK readers, Playtex made really, really sturdy bras and corsets back in the 50s and 60s, the sort that us modern girlies would not be seen dead in. "Foundation garments" or "brassieres", they would have been called, nothing as light and insubstantial as "bra".]
OK, enough of that, back to the racing.
But staying on the subject of clothing, LLB and I were quite intrigued by the Rabobank kit: they seemed to have at least three different jerseys within their team. Of course, I can't find any photos to illustrate this, so you'll have to take my word for it... I mean, I know that team jerseys come in different materials: Leopard have solid jerseys for normal races, jerseys made mainly of "net" effect fabric for the hot races, jerseys that are part solid, part net for those awkward in-between days etc - but generally, they are all printed the same.
But the Rabobank jerseys had very slightly different designs on them - the blue and orange blocks didn't line up in the same way, for example. This was most intriguing. Mind you, remember how we laughed at the new SaxoBank kit, with the eagles, some of which had, er, longer necks than the others?
So what's the story? Do the teams order a new batch of kit every month? Do they take the opportunity of a new order to make a few minor tweaks to the design each time? Do they order from different suppliers each time? (I thought that clothing companies were often sponsors, ie Craft, so you'd think that would not be the case.) Do the clothing companies not keep "patterns" or "blocks" of the kit, do they re-do the layout every time there is a new order? Are some of them actually cheap knock-offs, run off in some back-street sweat-shop to save costs?
Questions, questions.
Another question has to be Why are all the big teams here, at a non-UCI race, at an unfamiliar altitude? In the case of Frankie and Andy, we thought it was probably to do with Trek: if a sponsor says "we want you to be there" then I guess the management have to accommodate it?
So, Stage 6, we enter the Denver loop, and finally, finally! we get spectators - lots and lots and lots of them. Huge crowds! Fantastic! Now we can see why this race was referred to as being a challenge to the Vuelta - there's no comparison between this turn-out, and the strange zombie tour.
However, if Colorado want to beat the Vuelta, they really have to get their cameras and their commentary sorted out. On the little footage that we did get, we were constantly hearing the commentators complaining that they had no information on, for example, who had been taken off to hospital. Or who was in the break. Or that their start numbers didn't match the graphics. Or what the gaps were.
Well, there you have it, my comments on Colorado - with apologies for the lateness. And fingers crossed that the girly in The Bra does not turn out to be Elle......
Thursday 1 December 2011
Ken Sommer Teases Coug Again
Yesterday on Twitter - look, it's raining in the UK, all right, I can't get out to work, I'm stuck indoors, it was a bit dull, I had lots of paperwork to do but the Twitter page just opened up all by itself, and oh! as though by magic I was signed in......
Start again: Yesterday, on Twitter, I decided to change my avatar - yet again - as I'm getting a bit tired of the Crying Leopard face.
The time for wailing is over: Leopard Trek are no more, the merger has happened, now we all have to put on our smiley faces and make the most of it, look forward to the next season and the new challenges, blah blah blah woof woof etc.
You will remember that I horrified Ken Sommer recently with my nasty red Radio-Trek logo *sniggers and much laughter all round*.
Well, I didn't want to make him cross, so I thought I'd have another go at a better "fake" logo.
After some speculation about jersey design, I thought I might suggest that elements of the old jerseys could be retained, so I came up with this:
And actually, it's not bad, is it? In fact, think how much money they could save, by just screen printing this logo over the top of the old L-T jerseys, then adding NISSAN in big letters across the back.
There you go, we knew there was a reason for all that white space.... with a bit of felt-pen work on the Mercedes logos, and one or two others, they could be completely re-kitted at a fraction of the normal cost.
Anyway, having spent some time creating this minor work of art, I thought I should bring it to Ken's attention, to see if I'd get a seal of approval, or a tiny, tiny hint as to what the kit might actually be.
And do you know what? He replied, which is always nice: and he replied with a link to a photo, which he must have put up specially just to answer this tweet:
What can I say? Well done Ken, you had me going there, and Kat fell for it as well, and Barbara - we all went rushing off to see what the new jersey was going to be like, only to meet his retro rebuff.
I suppose you could say that at least he has confirmed that there IS going to be a new jersey, but that was a it of a foregone conclusion really, wasn't it? Neither the L-T kit nor the Shack kit would have quite the right selection of sponsor names, although, errrr, horrible thought, the Shack kit does indeed feature Shack, Nissan and Trek (and Twitter, for some unknown reason) so a case could be made for sticking to the old kit.
Yikes!
I am so glad that no-one suggested that on any of the blogs or forums, that would have been quite worrying! But luckily Ken has now confirmed that there will be a new kit, so let's be grateful and look forward to seeing it.
And apparently they're having a press conference next week, so maybe they'll unveil the new kit there? Let's hope that they have a UCI licence by then!
Oh, and as a side issue, it's almost a pity that Leopard Trek were riding Trek bikes not Bianchi - anyone else noticed the strange similarity in colour choice?
Start again: Yesterday, on Twitter, I decided to change my avatar - yet again - as I'm getting a bit tired of the Crying Leopard face.
You will remember that I horrified Ken Sommer recently with my nasty red Radio-Trek logo *sniggers and much laughter all round*.
Well, I didn't want to make him cross, so I thought I'd have another go at a better "fake" logo.
After some speculation about jersey design, I thought I might suggest that elements of the old jerseys could be retained, so I came up with this:
There you go, we knew there was a reason for all that white space.... with a bit of felt-pen work on the Mercedes logos, and one or two others, they could be completely re-kitted at a fraction of the normal cost.
Anyway, having spent some time creating this minor work of art, I thought I should bring it to Ken's attention, to see if I'd get a seal of approval, or a tiny, tiny hint as to what the kit might actually be.
And do you know what? He replied, which is always nice: and he replied with a link to a photo, which he must have put up specially just to answer this tweet:
What can I say? Well done Ken, you had me going there, and Kat fell for it as well, and Barbara - we all went rushing off to see what the new jersey was going to be like, only to meet his retro rebuff.
I suppose you could say that at least he has confirmed that there IS going to be a new jersey, but that was a it of a foregone conclusion really, wasn't it? Neither the L-T kit nor the Shack kit would have quite the right selection of sponsor names, although, errrr, horrible thought, the Shack kit does indeed feature Shack, Nissan and Trek (and Twitter, for some unknown reason) so a case could be made for sticking to the old kit.
Yikes!
I am so glad that no-one suggested that on any of the blogs or forums, that would have been quite worrying! But luckily Ken has now confirmed that there will be a new kit, so let's be grateful and look forward to seeing it.
And apparently they're having a press conference next week, so maybe they'll unveil the new kit there? Let's hope that they have a UCI licence by then!
Oh, and as a side issue, it's almost a pity that Leopard Trek were riding Trek bikes not Bianchi - anyone else noticed the strange similarity in colour choice?
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Drugs, Doping and Contador
I've been getting some questions on this subject from people who are a bit new to cycling, so I thought I'd put all the answers in one place, rather than reply individually.
Those of you who already know all about it, sorry! Come back tomorrow! Mind you, you could read on anyway, you might learn something new.. or I might make a mistake and have to be corrected? You know you all love telling me when I am wrong!
OK, Drugs In Cycling. Contador. What's the score?
Contador's hearing has now taken place, it took most of last week, and we can expect to hear the results by the end of December, or possibly not until the new year. So don't hold your breath. There has been so much written about it that I can hardly bear to go over it again - so in a nutshell, Conti tested positive for a banned substance, Clenbuterol, partway through the Tour last year. He said he has never taken drugs, and that it can only have come from him eating contaminated meat. Unfortunately, he was the only member of the team that ate the meat and was tested, so he can't prove it.
There have been other instances of athletes, in cycling and in other sports, showing positive for this drug and claiming it was from eating contaminated meat. All of those athletes had their appeals rejected, and had to accept their bans. Contador has the money and the political support to fight his case, and although legally this is the right thing to do, it hasn't won him any friends.
There is a school of thought that says he should have accepted the ban: his view was very much " I didn't do it, and I'm not going to be labelled as a drug cheat for the rest of my life"
Firstly, I would reassure you all that cycling is one of the least drug-tainted sports there is. No other sport has the level of testing that cycling does. It always makes the headlines when someone is caught for drugs, but that's not the true picture.
So, lots of info, so I'll divide it up into headings.
1)Why does everyone hate Contador?
2) What drugs are we talking about?
3) Is Doping not the same as doing drugs?
Errr, not easy to answer that lot neatly. But I will try.
Firstly, the abbreviations.
UCI = Union Cycliste Internationale. International Cycling Union, the blokes that run cycling. Based in Switzerland, therefore assumed to be neutral.
WADA World Anti Doping Agency. Nothing to do with the Wombat Anti-Defamatory Association, as was suggested a while ago when I was having trouble with the internet and it looked as though it were due to Wombats in the Wiring. It turned out to be Wallabies disguised as Wombats, hence the involvement of the second WADA.
PED = Performance Enhancing Drug.
Right, you are now ready to Read On:
1) Contador.
At last year's Tour, his doping control tests showed that his system contained Clenbuterol on four of the days after a rest day. Tiny, tiny amounts of it; but it's on the banned list. He said "not guilty, must have been in that contaminated meat wot I ate." This defence has been tried before, and has failed. WADA and the UCI say "athletes are responsible for what they ingest." Not knowing that you were accidentally eating something on the banned list is not a defence. Athletes have been banned for this, many times.
So, other athletes have tested positive for this same chemical, and have been banned, but Contador wasn't. He was initially given a one-year ban - half the normal length - but a few weeks later the Spanish authorities overturned it, and told him to race again. UCI and WADA appealed.
This does just seem a bit unfair. Other athletes have had to swallow their pride, accept their bans, and get on with it. Of course it's immensely hurtful to be accused of taking drugs, of course it's going to be "on your record" for the rest of your career, but it happens. Contador, however, had a lot of money and the support of the Spanish president, and his legal team found a loophole, claiming that he did not have to be banned if he could prove it was the result of accidental ingestion.
I leave you to imagine how crushingly hurtful this must have been to all the other athletes who had innocently taken medicine or had indeed accidentally ingested a banned substance.... there is a lot of feeling that he was only let off because he had important backing.
There is also the lingering possibility that he could have been doping......
....we'll come on to doping in a minute.
2) Drugs. Cycling as a sport says "you can train as hard as you like, but no PEDs."
This ruling is enforced by the UCI, who are the blokes who run cycling, and WADA which is the World Anti-Drug Association. As you already know.
Anyway - drugs. The list, which is ever-increasing, includes all the stuff you would expect, but it also includes a huge range of other drugs/chemicals that might not help the athlete in themselves, but would cover up their use of PEDs. I'm not a chemist, so you'll have to accept that somewhat simplified explanation.
Some drugs are completely banned - zero tolerance - and some are allowed in certain, specified quantities.
At one point, caffeine was on the banned list, but as it appears in tea, coffee, cola drinks and a ton of other stuff, they had to agree to allow a certain amount of it!
This is why athletes can't just grab some cough medicine when they feel a bit poorly, or take a few tablets if they have a headache, as we do: they have to be extremely careful about everything they eat/drink/swallow, in case it contains any banned substances.
Every cycling team has a team doctor, and they would probably do most of the work in training their cyclists not to take any over-the-counter medicines, or to take any herbal supplements or health foods without checking with the doctor first. Because you never know what they might contain.
This leads to a rather specialised research war: the cyclists try to find new additives or supplements that can help them perform better, but are not on the banned list. WADA investigate every new item, to assess how harmful it is and then, if appropriate, to ban it.
Quite often there is a "craze" for a new product, everyone takes it for a while, then the UCI or WADA decide it's not a good thing, and it goes on the banned list.
This is for the benefit of the cyclists, actually: it's well documented that some athletes will kill themselves with drugs if they think it will give them just one more season, just one more win.....
3) Doping. Blood Doping.
No, this is not quite the same as taking drugs. It works like this:
During a long stage race, your blood has to work hard to deliver oxygen, and remove wastes. (This is the simplified version, ok? I did Biology to A level but I don't want to bore anyone...) The longer you force your blood to work hard without taking a rest, the less well it performs. In the normal world, we call this "getting tired" and we stop for a while. But when you are pedalling every day for 2 weeks or more, you can't just stop.
So, a few weeks earlier, when you were fully rested, fully fit, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, you take out some of your own blood and store it carefully. Your body makes up the loss with no problem.
Later, at the race, you are feeling exhausted, so you inject the "bouncy" blood back into yourself.
Now, you might well be thinking that this sounds like an insanely dangerous thing to do. Well, yes, it is.
The trouble is, regarding injecting blood into yourself, that when you are an exhausted cyclist, it IS a good idea, because suddenly your blood is fresh and oxygenated, and you can whizz away the next day with a spring in your pedals. (The name "Landis" comes to mind...)
And it's a particularly "good" idea for cyclists, who have to undergo doping control, as there are no drugs: it's your own blood, so it doesn't show up on any tests.
(side issue: they never say whether you have to take out the same amount as you are about to put in... images of Ricco with bulging eyes and balloon-taut skin due to the amount of extra blood....)
As I understand it, the only chance WADA has to spot this sort of thing is the Biological Passport which records haemocrit levels in the blood: if they suddenly spike, that would indicate that someone has been fiddling with their blood. But it's not a foolproof system, yet.
And of course that leads us back to Contador: the suggestion was that, as his clenbuterol levels were so ridiculously low, he could not have been taking the drug at that time: but he could have been taking it earlier, during training, and he could have withdrawn some of his blood at that point, injecting it during the TdF for that "super boost" during the race.
The fact that the first reading occurred during/immediately after a rest day was considered to be a bit of a pointer as well.
The supposition is that the injected blood still had traces of clenbuterol in it.
As a general point, yes, who would be so stupid as to do something with so many risks: not just "being caught" but infection etc: and you can't remove, store, and inject blood without at least a couple of sidekicks. It's not like taking a tablet, that you can just slip into your mouth when no-one is looking. (*throws hands up in despair*) Other people MUST know about it - even if you could hide it from roommates and team members, you can't just disappear for an hour or so during a Tour, without someone noticing.
I suppose you could have a convenient "girlfriend".... that you slip off to see every day or two... (*shakes head*)
As Figgy said in a comment during an earlier discussion of this topic, this whole culture of "winning by cheating" is beyond us, but I guess we have to assume that if you are not quite a top-class athlete, and you have trained and trained but still can't quite win races, you feel so desperate to win that you WILL do what it takes, and you WILL stand there on that podium, smiling and accepting the accolades, not caring that you cheated to get them.
It's possible that such a second-rate person (both in athletic terms and morally, ha ha) might reason that other competitors have better kit, better team support, better nutritionists, access to wind tunnels, individual coaching etc whereas they just pound around the roads to get fit... so if their competitors can take benefit from their advantages, then they (the bad guy) can take advantage of a simple blood exchange. After all, it IS his own blood, it's not like he was taking drugs or anything..... I am sure they find ways to justify it to themselves.
And there's the contractual problems as well: if you are good cyclist but not a brilliant one, your team might be saying to you that if you don't win something, you'll be fired. Or you won't be allowed to ride the big races. And if all you can do is cycle, then the thought of being sacked - well, people do do desperate things when they see a black future ahead of them.
So, the answers are: Everyone "hates" Contador because he either cheated, or he used money and influence to get himself declared innocent where other athletes, similarly innocent, have had to take the punishment.
Drugs are bad.
Doping is particularly bad.
There, I hope that cleared up a few points.
Those of you who already know all about it, sorry! Come back tomorrow! Mind you, you could read on anyway, you might learn something new.. or I might make a mistake and have to be corrected? You know you all love telling me when I am wrong!
OK, Drugs In Cycling. Contador. What's the score?
Contador's hearing has now taken place, it took most of last week, and we can expect to hear the results by the end of December, or possibly not until the new year. So don't hold your breath. There has been so much written about it that I can hardly bear to go over it again - so in a nutshell, Conti tested positive for a banned substance, Clenbuterol, partway through the Tour last year. He said he has never taken drugs, and that it can only have come from him eating contaminated meat. Unfortunately, he was the only member of the team that ate the meat and was tested, so he can't prove it.
There have been other instances of athletes, in cycling and in other sports, showing positive for this drug and claiming it was from eating contaminated meat. All of those athletes had their appeals rejected, and had to accept their bans. Contador has the money and the political support to fight his case, and although legally this is the right thing to do, it hasn't won him any friends.
There is a school of thought that says he should have accepted the ban: his view was very much " I didn't do it, and I'm not going to be labelled as a drug cheat for the rest of my life"
Firstly, I would reassure you all that cycling is one of the least drug-tainted sports there is. No other sport has the level of testing that cycling does. It always makes the headlines when someone is caught for drugs, but that's not the true picture.
So, lots of info, so I'll divide it up into headings.
1)Why does everyone hate Contador?
2) What drugs are we talking about?
3) Is Doping not the same as doing drugs?
Errr, not easy to answer that lot neatly. But I will try.
Firstly, the abbreviations.
UCI = Union Cycliste Internationale. International Cycling Union, the blokes that run cycling. Based in Switzerland, therefore assumed to be neutral.
WADA World Anti Doping Agency. Nothing to do with the Wombat Anti-Defamatory Association, as was suggested a while ago when I was having trouble with the internet and it looked as though it were due to Wombats in the Wiring. It turned out to be Wallabies disguised as Wombats, hence the involvement of the second WADA.
PED = Performance Enhancing Drug.
Right, you are now ready to Read On:
1) Contador.
At last year's Tour, his doping control tests showed that his system contained Clenbuterol on four of the days after a rest day. Tiny, tiny amounts of it; but it's on the banned list. He said "not guilty, must have been in that contaminated meat wot I ate." This defence has been tried before, and has failed. WADA and the UCI say "athletes are responsible for what they ingest." Not knowing that you were accidentally eating something on the banned list is not a defence. Athletes have been banned for this, many times.
So, other athletes have tested positive for this same chemical, and have been banned, but Contador wasn't. He was initially given a one-year ban - half the normal length - but a few weeks later the Spanish authorities overturned it, and told him to race again. UCI and WADA appealed.
This does just seem a bit unfair. Other athletes have had to swallow their pride, accept their bans, and get on with it. Of course it's immensely hurtful to be accused of taking drugs, of course it's going to be "on your record" for the rest of your career, but it happens. Contador, however, had a lot of money and the support of the Spanish president, and his legal team found a loophole, claiming that he did not have to be banned if he could prove it was the result of accidental ingestion.
I leave you to imagine how crushingly hurtful this must have been to all the other athletes who had innocently taken medicine or had indeed accidentally ingested a banned substance.... there is a lot of feeling that he was only let off because he had important backing.
There is also the lingering possibility that he could have been doping......
....we'll come on to doping in a minute.
2) Drugs. Cycling as a sport says "you can train as hard as you like, but no PEDs."
This ruling is enforced by the UCI, who are the blokes who run cycling, and WADA which is the World Anti-Drug Association. As you already know.
Anyway - drugs. The list, which is ever-increasing, includes all the stuff you would expect, but it also includes a huge range of other drugs/chemicals that might not help the athlete in themselves, but would cover up their use of PEDs. I'm not a chemist, so you'll have to accept that somewhat simplified explanation.
Some drugs are completely banned - zero tolerance - and some are allowed in certain, specified quantities.
At one point, caffeine was on the banned list, but as it appears in tea, coffee, cola drinks and a ton of other stuff, they had to agree to allow a certain amount of it!
This is why athletes can't just grab some cough medicine when they feel a bit poorly, or take a few tablets if they have a headache, as we do: they have to be extremely careful about everything they eat/drink/swallow, in case it contains any banned substances.
Every cycling team has a team doctor, and they would probably do most of the work in training their cyclists not to take any over-the-counter medicines, or to take any herbal supplements or health foods without checking with the doctor first. Because you never know what they might contain.
This leads to a rather specialised research war: the cyclists try to find new additives or supplements that can help them perform better, but are not on the banned list. WADA investigate every new item, to assess how harmful it is and then, if appropriate, to ban it.
Quite often there is a "craze" for a new product, everyone takes it for a while, then the UCI or WADA decide it's not a good thing, and it goes on the banned list.
This is for the benefit of the cyclists, actually: it's well documented that some athletes will kill themselves with drugs if they think it will give them just one more season, just one more win.....
3) Doping. Blood Doping.
No, this is not quite the same as taking drugs. It works like this:
During a long stage race, your blood has to work hard to deliver oxygen, and remove wastes. (This is the simplified version, ok? I did Biology to A level but I don't want to bore anyone...) The longer you force your blood to work hard without taking a rest, the less well it performs. In the normal world, we call this "getting tired" and we stop for a while. But when you are pedalling every day for 2 weeks or more, you can't just stop.
So, a few weeks earlier, when you were fully rested, fully fit, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, you take out some of your own blood and store it carefully. Your body makes up the loss with no problem.
Later, at the race, you are feeling exhausted, so you inject the "bouncy" blood back into yourself.
Now, you might well be thinking that this sounds like an insanely dangerous thing to do. Well, yes, it is.
The trouble is, regarding injecting blood into yourself, that when you are an exhausted cyclist, it IS a good idea, because suddenly your blood is fresh and oxygenated, and you can whizz away the next day with a spring in your pedals. (The name "Landis" comes to mind...)
And it's a particularly "good" idea for cyclists, who have to undergo doping control, as there are no drugs: it's your own blood, so it doesn't show up on any tests.
(side issue: they never say whether you have to take out the same amount as you are about to put in... images of Ricco with bulging eyes and balloon-taut skin due to the amount of extra blood....)
As I understand it, the only chance WADA has to spot this sort of thing is the Biological Passport which records haemocrit levels in the blood: if they suddenly spike, that would indicate that someone has been fiddling with their blood. But it's not a foolproof system, yet.
And of course that leads us back to Contador: the suggestion was that, as his clenbuterol levels were so ridiculously low, he could not have been taking the drug at that time: but he could have been taking it earlier, during training, and he could have withdrawn some of his blood at that point, injecting it during the TdF for that "super boost" during the race.
The fact that the first reading occurred during/immediately after a rest day was considered to be a bit of a pointer as well.
The supposition is that the injected blood still had traces of clenbuterol in it.
As a general point, yes, who would be so stupid as to do something with so many risks: not just "being caught" but infection etc: and you can't remove, store, and inject blood without at least a couple of sidekicks. It's not like taking a tablet, that you can just slip into your mouth when no-one is looking. (*throws hands up in despair*) Other people MUST know about it - even if you could hide it from roommates and team members, you can't just disappear for an hour or so during a Tour, without someone noticing.
I suppose you could have a convenient "girlfriend".... that you slip off to see every day or two... (*shakes head*)
As Figgy said in a comment during an earlier discussion of this topic, this whole culture of "winning by cheating" is beyond us, but I guess we have to assume that if you are not quite a top-class athlete, and you have trained and trained but still can't quite win races, you feel so desperate to win that you WILL do what it takes, and you WILL stand there on that podium, smiling and accepting the accolades, not caring that you cheated to get them.
It's possible that such a second-rate person (both in athletic terms and morally, ha ha) might reason that other competitors have better kit, better team support, better nutritionists, access to wind tunnels, individual coaching etc whereas they just pound around the roads to get fit... so if their competitors can take benefit from their advantages, then they (the bad guy) can take advantage of a simple blood exchange. After all, it IS his own blood, it's not like he was taking drugs or anything..... I am sure they find ways to justify it to themselves.
And there's the contractual problems as well: if you are good cyclist but not a brilliant one, your team might be saying to you that if you don't win something, you'll be fired. Or you won't be allowed to ride the big races. And if all you can do is cycle, then the thought of being sacked - well, people do do desperate things when they see a black future ahead of them.
So, the answers are: Everyone "hates" Contador because he either cheated, or he used money and influence to get himself declared innocent where other athletes, similarly innocent, have had to take the punishment.
Drugs are bad.
Doping is particularly bad.
There, I hope that cleared up a few points.
Sports Personality of the Year
Great news for cycling in the UK - Mark Cavendish, ex-HTC, now going to Sky, has been nominated for the UK Sports Personality of the Year award!
This is a massive step forward for cycling, and shows how the popularity of the sport is increasing in leaps and bounds.
I don't think there has ever been a cyclist in the nominations before, so this is quite a thrill for all of us UK cycling fans, whether we are supporters of Mark or not.
Of course, he might not win, but even to be in the Top 10 is a tremendous boost to the sport.
He's up against Andy Murray (Leelu, I can hear you from here!) and some others that I don't know. For the full list, follow the link I gave above.
Best news, voting occurs on the night of the award, which is the 22nd December, and is a phone vote. Normally, in a phone vote, footballers win: but this year, not a single footballer made the top 10, yay! Sadly, not a single woman made the top 10 either, which is a bit odd.
So, yay for Sky, and go, Marky, go!
This is a massive step forward for cycling, and shows how the popularity of the sport is increasing in leaps and bounds.
I don't think there has ever been a cyclist in the nominations before, so this is quite a thrill for all of us UK cycling fans, whether we are supporters of Mark or not.
Of course, he might not win, but even to be in the Top 10 is a tremendous boost to the sport.
He's up against Andy Murray (Leelu, I can hear you from here!) and some others that I don't know. For the full list, follow the link I gave above.
Best news, voting occurs on the night of the award, which is the 22nd December, and is a phone vote. Normally, in a phone vote, footballers win: but this year, not a single footballer made the top 10, yay! Sadly, not a single woman made the top 10 either, which is a bit odd.
So, yay for Sky, and go, Marky, go!
Thursday 24 November 2011
New Kit time!
Ok cats and kittens, it's "That" time of year again - yes, we have to brace ourselves for the new team kits.
Sadly, hardly any teams seem to be able to leave the kit alone for more than five minutes, and the end-of-season break seems to be viewed as the ideal time to change it all again.
Of course, if the team is newly formed, or newly merged, or newly pruned of a sponsor, then there is a legitimate case to be made for a new kit: an expression about "new brooms" comes to mind.
[note for non-UK readers - the expression is "the new broom sweeps cleanest" meaning that a new management or government or leader is often inclined to sort out problems that an old one may have been overlooking for years. On the other hand, there is another phrase, "but the old broom knows the corners" which implies that the new broom might miss some of the important areas, being so caught up in the excitement of being new. End of digression, please read on.]
Of course, being Andy fans, we are all agog to see what sort of mess the new RadioTrek Nissan kit is going to be.
Remember how disappointed we were, when we first saw the classic, elegant, clean lines of the Leopard kit? "Boring!" we all shouted, "Too close to Sky - and Garmin - and, er, anyone else with a plain black kit!"
But we eventually came to love it, spot it in the peloton, and some of us (er hem) even made flags of it, to wave at the Tour of Britain, or emblazoned their logo on the back of all their work t-shirts....
[Another digression: for me, the only disappointment of the final day of the Tour of Britain - apart from Jensi not being there, of course - was that I was the only person in the whole of London with a Leopard flag, and the Leopard car didn't even wave back at me - not once! It went past 16 times, but I didn't get even a tiny wave from a back seat passenger. Oh well *sigh* maybe I'll have to make a bigger one for next year...]
So, onto new kits. Here's the first one to be announced - Lotto Belisol.
This is half of the former Omega-Pharma Lotto team, now split into Omega-Pharma-Quickstep (catchy!) and Lotto-Belisol (oh dear, Belisol? Sounds like an ointment.)
Here's the old OLO kit, which always makes me think of chewing gum, for some reason. Must be the colour combinations. It was a bit jazzy with logos, but nice distinctive colour bands, easy to spot in the peloton although personally, I am not in favour of having different-coloured shoulders or sides, as it means that the riders look different depending on which side the camera goes. I don't like this, as it means having to learn two kits for one team! (oh dear, so lazy.)
And the new Lotto kit? Well, here it is: the press release calls it "sober and coherent" and some rubbish about "which reflects the dynamism of our riders, their class, and their savoir-faire.” Yes, fine.
Personally I think it looks as though someone has taken a sheet of navy-blue paper, some of which has been printed with the word Lotto, chopped it up into pieces, dropped them from a height onto a board, then cut out an outline of a jersey and shorts, with no regard to how the blocks of colour match up .
I mean, look at that little shark's fin at the front hem: what's that for? It fails to line up with the panel in the shorts, which it could so easily do - and it has half a logo of some sort on it.
And the weird curvy "Lotto" word on the right leg? Can you imagine how distorted that is going to look, on the legs of their sprinters, with their big thigh muscles? I'm not keen on the leg bands, either - one red, one white, it's just jumbled, incoherent, and not particularly pretty.
And why is the word Belisol in a different shade of blue from every other blue used on the kit? By the way, in case you're wondering who Belisol are, they make PVC doors and Windows. So if Omega-Pharma-Lotto ever get back together, the two left-out sponsors can combine wooden floors with PVC doors and windows, and can "construct" a team of their own. (That was a joke.)
So, I'm not that impressed with the first of the new kits, but well done to Lotto for getting it out nice and early, and good luck for the coming season.
So now we turn to RadioTrekNissanShack. Well, we don't even know their name yet, let alone their kit - hey, have we not been here before? How many Leopards ended up in the new squad? 12 or so? My, that sounds so familiar....
Leaving that aside, we turn to The Kit.
RadioShack used to be grey with a big red panel, (right) and the fetching little yellow armbands, which were the symbol of the Livestrong cancer foundation. The shorts were more-or-less red, with grey panels.
Then they went to the red, white and black kit of last year - left - which was much nicer, we all approve of black shorts, and they added a very useful white back panel - like the Sky kit, designed to be cooler for the riders on hot days - but with a striking thick red stripe up the middle, making them very easy to spot in the peloton.
Now they are going to be starting again: so what can we deduce? Well, the RadioShack stores have the "R" logo, so we can guess that will appear somewhere, and it seems to be either white circle and R filled in with red, or red circle and R with a white background. I can't immediately see any logic as to which way they do it, but I haven't really researched it thoroughly. (the hateful phrase "can't be arsed" comes to mind, sorry.)
Nissan dealerships have as their house colours silver or grey, with vertical red stripes around the doors, and the logo is of course the big chrome "hamburger", a circle with a bar across it horizontally.
Overall, we are therefore likely to get grey and red as our main colours, with at least one circular logo, probably the RadioShack "R". I have a horrible feeling that we will be keeping the yellow hoop somewhere in the kit.
Why "horrible"? I've nothing against Lance Armstrong, I have cheered for him in the past, I've read a couple of his books (oh, by the way, I've now read Mark Cavendish's book Boy Racer - it was jolly good, surprisingly, and quite insightful. And you should HEAR what he says about the independent drugs testing company, ACE, which HTC used to use, but ditched as they were not particularly any good, and did not seem to have any anti-contamination protocols in place. And WADA are going to be calling them to give evidence in the Conti case. Oh dear, oh dear...) but I'm just a little worried about all that bad publicity and doping speculation, and I'd rather start "our" new team off without past links. In fact, the whole charity thing is a marvellously worthwhile cause, but really, honestly, I'd rather be able to choose my charities privately, than be in effect "forced" to support them if I choose to support the new RaNT team.
Anyway, back to the kit: it's probably a bit late, but RaNT, may I just politely remind you of some important points about kit design.
1) Black shorts. Don't discuss it, just do it.
2) Same colours visible front and back. Lampre......were they pink? Or blue?
3) Something very distinctive on the back, for helicopter peloton shots.
4) Same colours left and right!
5) Don't waste anything good on the lower chest area: last year, Garmin suddenly popped up in a glaring white kit, total contrast to the normal black one, for the Tour, and it wasn't until days after the race had ended, when I saw a photo of them en masse, that I even realised that there was a big band of blue argyle on the front! Make the designers watch a race before they start designing... cyclist hunch over their handlebars, crumpling up that lower chest area, so we can't see it at all.
Don't believe me? Here's the Garmin squad in action. Let's look at those jerseys: black band across the chest, letter E on the shoulder, blue arm bands for Johan Van Summeren to roll up..... and that's all, isn't it?
Nope! This is the whole thing.
What a waste, eh? We couldn't see that extensive blue argyling at all.
AND - added at a later date because LLB reminded me of it, and I can't believe I forgot to mention this - the white Garmin kit had the ultimate level of stupidity and bad design: the blue argyle-ing went round the back as well. Sorry? You didn't see it? That's because they printed the blue argyle right up to the top of the pockets. The pockets? Yes, the pockets. You know, the handy receptacles for bottle, gels, bananas: those handy panels that the numbers are pinned on to....
Yes, they chose to put the one bit of distinctive colour on the back, in the one place where it would be competely invisible.
And you are seriously telling me that they paid a professional company to design the kit?
Well, those are my Top Tips for kit design, it will be interesting to see what we get. I do hope that we aren't going to be kept on the hook right into the new year....
Come on Mr Bruyneel, I bet you've been doodling kit designs on your scratch pad all year long, please don't keep us waiting too long.
Sadly, hardly any teams seem to be able to leave the kit alone for more than five minutes, and the end-of-season break seems to be viewed as the ideal time to change it all again.
Of course, if the team is newly formed, or newly merged, or newly pruned of a sponsor, then there is a legitimate case to be made for a new kit: an expression about "new brooms" comes to mind.
[note for non-UK readers - the expression is "the new broom sweeps cleanest" meaning that a new management or government or leader is often inclined to sort out problems that an old one may have been overlooking for years. On the other hand, there is another phrase, "but the old broom knows the corners" which implies that the new broom might miss some of the important areas, being so caught up in the excitement of being new. End of digression, please read on.]
Of course, being Andy fans, we are all agog to see what sort of mess the new RadioTrek Nissan kit is going to be.
Remember how disappointed we were, when we first saw the classic, elegant, clean lines of the Leopard kit? "Boring!" we all shouted, "Too close to Sky - and Garmin - and, er, anyone else with a plain black kit!"
But we eventually came to love it, spot it in the peloton, and some of us (er hem) even made flags of it, to wave at the Tour of Britain, or emblazoned their logo on the back of all their work t-shirts....
[Another digression: for me, the only disappointment of the final day of the Tour of Britain - apart from Jensi not being there, of course - was that I was the only person in the whole of London with a Leopard flag, and the Leopard car didn't even wave back at me - not once! It went past 16 times, but I didn't get even a tiny wave from a back seat passenger. Oh well *sigh* maybe I'll have to make a bigger one for next year...]
So, onto new kits. Here's the first one to be announced - Lotto Belisol.
This is half of the former Omega-Pharma Lotto team, now split into Omega-Pharma-Quickstep (catchy!) and Lotto-Belisol (oh dear, Belisol? Sounds like an ointment.)
Here's the old OLO kit, which always makes me think of chewing gum, for some reason. Must be the colour combinations. It was a bit jazzy with logos, but nice distinctive colour bands, easy to spot in the peloton although personally, I am not in favour of having different-coloured shoulders or sides, as it means that the riders look different depending on which side the camera goes. I don't like this, as it means having to learn two kits for one team! (oh dear, so lazy.)
And the new Lotto kit? Well, here it is: the press release calls it "sober and coherent" and some rubbish about "which reflects the dynamism of our riders, their class, and their savoir-faire.” Yes, fine.
Personally I think it looks as though someone has taken a sheet of navy-blue paper, some of which has been printed with the word Lotto, chopped it up into pieces, dropped them from a height onto a board, then cut out an outline of a jersey and shorts, with no regard to how the blocks of colour match up .
I mean, look at that little shark's fin at the front hem: what's that for? It fails to line up with the panel in the shorts, which it could so easily do - and it has half a logo of some sort on it.
And the weird curvy "Lotto" word on the right leg? Can you imagine how distorted that is going to look, on the legs of their sprinters, with their big thigh muscles? I'm not keen on the leg bands, either - one red, one white, it's just jumbled, incoherent, and not particularly pretty.
And why is the word Belisol in a different shade of blue from every other blue used on the kit? By the way, in case you're wondering who Belisol are, they make PVC doors and Windows. So if Omega-Pharma-Lotto ever get back together, the two left-out sponsors can combine wooden floors with PVC doors and windows, and can "construct" a team of their own. (That was a joke.)
So, I'm not that impressed with the first of the new kits, but well done to Lotto for getting it out nice and early, and good luck for the coming season.
So now we turn to RadioTrekNissanShack. Well, we don't even know their name yet, let alone their kit - hey, have we not been here before? How many Leopards ended up in the new squad? 12 or so? My, that sounds so familiar....
Leaving that aside, we turn to The Kit.
RadioShack used to be grey with a big red panel, (right) and the fetching little yellow armbands, which were the symbol of the Livestrong cancer foundation. The shorts were more-or-less red, with grey panels.
Then they went to the red, white and black kit of last year - left - which was much nicer, we all approve of black shorts, and they added a very useful white back panel - like the Sky kit, designed to be cooler for the riders on hot days - but with a striking thick red stripe up the middle, making them very easy to spot in the peloton.
Now they are going to be starting again: so what can we deduce? Well, the RadioShack stores have the "R" logo, so we can guess that will appear somewhere, and it seems to be either white circle and R filled in with red, or red circle and R with a white background. I can't immediately see any logic as to which way they do it, but I haven't really researched it thoroughly. (the hateful phrase "can't be arsed" comes to mind, sorry.)
Nissan dealerships have as their house colours silver or grey, with vertical red stripes around the doors, and the logo is of course the big chrome "hamburger", a circle with a bar across it horizontally.
Overall, we are therefore likely to get grey and red as our main colours, with at least one circular logo, probably the RadioShack "R". I have a horrible feeling that we will be keeping the yellow hoop somewhere in the kit.
Why "horrible"? I've nothing against Lance Armstrong, I have cheered for him in the past, I've read a couple of his books (oh, by the way, I've now read Mark Cavendish's book Boy Racer - it was jolly good, surprisingly, and quite insightful. And you should HEAR what he says about the independent drugs testing company, ACE, which HTC used to use, but ditched as they were not particularly any good, and did not seem to have any anti-contamination protocols in place. And WADA are going to be calling them to give evidence in the Conti case. Oh dear, oh dear...) but I'm just a little worried about all that bad publicity and doping speculation, and I'd rather start "our" new team off without past links. In fact, the whole charity thing is a marvellously worthwhile cause, but really, honestly, I'd rather be able to choose my charities privately, than be in effect "forced" to support them if I choose to support the new RaNT team.
Anyway, back to the kit: it's probably a bit late, but RaNT, may I just politely remind you of some important points about kit design.
1) Black shorts. Don't discuss it, just do it.
2) Same colours visible front and back. Lampre......were they pink? Or blue?
3) Something very distinctive on the back, for helicopter peloton shots.
4) Same colours left and right!
5) Don't waste anything good on the lower chest area: last year, Garmin suddenly popped up in a glaring white kit, total contrast to the normal black one, for the Tour, and it wasn't until days after the race had ended, when I saw a photo of them en masse, that I even realised that there was a big band of blue argyle on the front! Make the designers watch a race before they start designing... cyclist hunch over their handlebars, crumpling up that lower chest area, so we can't see it at all.
Don't believe me? Here's the Garmin squad in action. Let's look at those jerseys: black band across the chest, letter E on the shoulder, blue arm bands for Johan Van Summeren to roll up..... and that's all, isn't it?
Nope! This is the whole thing.
What a waste, eh? We couldn't see that extensive blue argyling at all.
AND - added at a later date because LLB reminded me of it, and I can't believe I forgot to mention this - the white Garmin kit had the ultimate level of stupidity and bad design: the blue argyle-ing went round the back as well. Sorry? You didn't see it? That's because they printed the blue argyle right up to the top of the pockets. The pockets? Yes, the pockets. You know, the handy receptacles for bottle, gels, bananas: those handy panels that the numbers are pinned on to....
Yes, they chose to put the one bit of distinctive colour on the back, in the one place where it would be competely invisible.
And you are seriously telling me that they paid a professional company to design the kit?
Well, those are my Top Tips for kit design, it will be interesting to see what we get. I do hope that we aren't going to be kept on the hook right into the new year....
Come on Mr Bruyneel, I bet you've been doodling kit designs on your scratch pad all year long, please don't keep us waiting too long.
Friday 18 November 2011
Andy Goes Speeding!
Shock Horror - Our Glorious Leader has been "done" for speeding!
Yes, read all about it: he was caught doing 101kph (63mph) somewhere in the south of Luxembourg, and is now quivering with fear under the threat of a fine of 350 euros (£300, USD 472, CAD 485, AUD 472, for the convenience of the top four Schlecklander-occupied countries, according to my Flag Counter, of which I am still ridiculously proud) and possibly - even - a month's ban!
Oh no!
In a country that's, what did Barbara say, less than 40km across: and living in the same road as his family, and his brother and with his best mate Jakob, with whom he works, living in the same building: yes, a ban of a month is really going to put a crimp in his style. Not to mention TinkerJil, who we assume is a fully grown adult and therefore has her own car.
So it probably won't be a truly terrible experience for him....
So what was OGL doing, breaking the law in this disgraceful way? (Tongue in cheek - I hardly think that doing 63mph is that bad a crime. Unless it was in a 30mph zone, over the school crossing, in the fog, with no lights on, with Jakob sticking his bare backside out of one window, and with terrible music blaring from the speakers.)
Well, we don't know. We don't even know what speed he was supposed to be doing!
I've had a quick look at good old News 352, and the headlines in Lux today are:
"Punched in the face for a smoke" Nothing to do with us.
"Traffic chaos after accident on the A1" Horrors! I do hope the Howald Tunnel wasn't affected. I've had a quick look at the traffic cameras, and the A3 does look a bit sticky - well, there are more than 2 lonely cars in sight, which makes a change - but it is early morning rush hour, and it does appear to be foggy over most of the country, so it's not really surprising.
"Wickrange repeat offender is a big fella" Some tall bloke is nicking stuff from a shop. Not OGL.
"Police violence no longer tolerated" You mean it was, before?
"Child fatally injured in horrific accident" This one is bad, a small child fell out of his mother's car and died from head injuries. Always strap 'em in, and activate the child-proof locks.
"Toilet heist" I'm not even going to look at the details of that one.
"Burst boiler causes basement fire". Probably horrible for those involved, luckily, not us.
"Luxair: fog will hinder flights" There! Told you it was foggy!
"Friday night's alright for fightin'..." A nightclub wouldn't let some people in, and a scuffle broke out.
and finally:
"Drunken Frenchman almost runs over cop" I'm saying nothing about the standard of French drivers, but you know what I'm thinking... Fletcha, Hoogerland.....
So, no details I'm afraid. Maybe later, some more info will emerge. Or we might have to Schpleculate about it... *maniacal laughter in the background* I'm sure that someone will be suggesting that it's some way linked with improving his TT speeds.......
Yes, read all about it: he was caught doing 101kph (63mph) somewhere in the south of Luxembourg, and is now quivering with fear under the threat of a fine of 350 euros (£300, USD 472, CAD 485, AUD 472, for the convenience of the top four Schlecklander-occupied countries, according to my Flag Counter, of which I am still ridiculously proud) and possibly - even - a month's ban!
Oh no!
In a country that's, what did Barbara say, less than 40km across: and living in the same road as his family, and his brother and with his best mate Jakob, with whom he works, living in the same building: yes, a ban of a month is really going to put a crimp in his style. Not to mention TinkerJil, who we assume is a fully grown adult and therefore has her own car.
So it probably won't be a truly terrible experience for him....
So what was OGL doing, breaking the law in this disgraceful way? (Tongue in cheek - I hardly think that doing 63mph is that bad a crime. Unless it was in a 30mph zone, over the school crossing, in the fog, with no lights on, with Jakob sticking his bare backside out of one window, and with terrible music blaring from the speakers.)
Well, we don't know. We don't even know what speed he was supposed to be doing!
I've had a quick look at good old News 352, and the headlines in Lux today are:
"Punched in the face for a smoke" Nothing to do with us.
"Traffic chaos after accident on the A1" Horrors! I do hope the Howald Tunnel wasn't affected. I've had a quick look at the traffic cameras, and the A3 does look a bit sticky - well, there are more than 2 lonely cars in sight, which makes a change - but it is early morning rush hour, and it does appear to be foggy over most of the country, so it's not really surprising.
"Wickrange repeat offender is a big fella" Some tall bloke is nicking stuff from a shop. Not OGL.
"Police violence no longer tolerated" You mean it was, before?
"Child fatally injured in horrific accident" This one is bad, a small child fell out of his mother's car and died from head injuries. Always strap 'em in, and activate the child-proof locks.
"Toilet heist" I'm not even going to look at the details of that one.
"Burst boiler causes basement fire". Probably horrible for those involved, luckily, not us.
"Luxair: fog will hinder flights" There! Told you it was foggy!
"Friday night's alright for fightin'..." A nightclub wouldn't let some people in, and a scuffle broke out.
and finally:
"Drunken Frenchman almost runs over cop" I'm saying nothing about the standard of French drivers, but you know what I'm thinking... Fletcha, Hoogerland.....
So, no details I'm afraid. Maybe later, some more info will emerge. Or we might have to Schpleculate about it... *maniacal laughter in the background* I'm sure that someone will be suggesting that it's some way linked with improving his TT speeds.......
Tuesday 15 November 2011
You know you're a diehard cycling fan when...
Earlier this year, LLB and I were proud to award ourselves Diehard ProCycling Fan badges (virtual, of course) because we:
1) Have been to a stage race, a TT, and a crit.
2) Have stayed watching a TT right to the end.
3) In the rain.
4) Have sat indoors and missed the few sunny days of summer, just to watch TdF on TV.
We thought that covered the more important points of fandom, but there are some more signs.
Fairly basic criteria are of course being able to name every team in the Pro-Team peloton, and you get extra points for being able to recognise most of the Continental teams, by their kit.
I get further points, as I have a team musette and bidon, left.
(Oh, yes, I'm still proud of that!)
And I get an extra point as I could have had another bidon that was thrown towards me during a race. (I gave it away - I'm good like that.)
More points are awarded for naming pets after cyclists: I have a fish called Bram Tankink.
Yes, I know he's Rabobank and has nothing to do with Leopard Trek or Andy Schleck, I just thought it was a good name. Overtones of Dracula, combined with tanking up and down, and living in a tank. It just felt right.
I have a small bear from New Zealand called Henderson, after Greg Henderson, (actually he's not even my bear, I'm looking after him for a friend. Do you know, [by the way, I'm looking after 20 or so of her second-league bears while she moved house] she hadn't even removed his tags? Or given him a name??!! So I named him Henderson. Heh heh heh...) and of course you all remember Johan Van Lobsteren - right - who is also only visiting, but who has already found out about the remote control....
Recently, Eva and I were tweeting, and it came to pass that she defined Easter this year as being during LBL, whereas next year it will be during PT.
So I suggested to her than another sign of being a diehard cycling fan was in describing events by the race which they interrupt....
...and by being prepared to watch Track events, strange as they are, in desperation, when there is no other cycling on......
...and she suggested that, as a Dutch person, knowing the English phrase "Polka Dot" was a pretty good sign, too!
I suppose that the most obvious sign of being a Diehard Cycling Fan is when you plan your holidays around big Tours, (actually, we all do that, don't we?) but a real give-away is when you plan your family by using the Tour de France Testosterone Method: ie babies conceived during the season are going to be girls, as all the testosterone is being used up.
Honestly, it's a theory! Mark Cavendish says that he and Peta's baby is going to be a girl, for that reason.
[Thinks: perhaps we could ask Jensi if he'd be prepared to be used for market research of this hypothesis, as he has 6 children and if he would be kind enough to confirm which ones were conceived during the season.... surely that's enough for a good sample? Go on, you ask him.]
So, if you can think of any other give-aways, do tell!
1) Have been to a stage race, a TT, and a crit.
2) Have stayed watching a TT right to the end.
3) In the rain.
4) Have sat indoors and missed the few sunny days of summer, just to watch TdF on TV.
We thought that covered the more important points of fandom, but there are some more signs.
Fairly basic criteria are of course being able to name every team in the Pro-Team peloton, and you get extra points for being able to recognise most of the Continental teams, by their kit.
(Oh, yes, I'm still proud of that!)
And I get an extra point as I could have had another bidon that was thrown towards me during a race. (I gave it away - I'm good like that.)
More points are awarded for naming pets after cyclists: I have a fish called Bram Tankink.
Yes, I know he's Rabobank and has nothing to do with Leopard Trek or Andy Schleck, I just thought it was a good name. Overtones of Dracula, combined with tanking up and down, and living in a tank. It just felt right.
Recently, Eva and I were tweeting, and it came to pass that she defined Easter this year as being during LBL, whereas next year it will be during PT.
So I suggested to her than another sign of being a diehard cycling fan was in describing events by the race which they interrupt....
...and by being prepared to watch Track events, strange as they are, in desperation, when there is no other cycling on......
...and she suggested that, as a Dutch person, knowing the English phrase "Polka Dot" was a pretty good sign, too!
I suppose that the most obvious sign of being a Diehard Cycling Fan is when you plan your holidays around big Tours, (actually, we all do that, don't we?) but a real give-away is when you plan your family by using the Tour de France Testosterone Method: ie babies conceived during the season are going to be girls, as all the testosterone is being used up.
Honestly, it's a theory! Mark Cavendish says that he and Peta's baby is going to be a girl, for that reason.
[Thinks: perhaps we could ask Jensi if he'd be prepared to be used for market research of this hypothesis, as he has 6 children and if he would be kind enough to confirm which ones were conceived during the season.... surely that's enough for a good sample? Go on, you ask him.]
So, if you can think of any other give-aways, do tell!
Sunday 13 November 2011
Sat Nav will never be the same again
Everyone remember Mad Bad Dave Zabriskie?
OK, he's not a Leopard Trek rider, he rides for Garmin, but he's a real character, and quite bonkers. Who can forget his memorable singing-while-applying-groin-cream video?
If you really can't remember it, I've kindly embedded it (below) so that you can relive the moment.
He has his own brand of cyclist-sore-patch-reduction cream, called DZ-nuts (for some reason I have just mis-typed that as DZ-buts, not once but three times) and he was rumoured to be producing a version for female cyclists - who apparently also suffer from chafing in the billowy portions - which, it was suggested, would be called DZ-lips. Thankfully, it was named "Bliss" instead. Less catchy, but considerably less tacky!
Here you go: and if you watch it right to the end - it's ok, it's not very long, and it doesn't get any "worse" than when it starts - you can see Tyler Farrar giving him a very strange look. Which could be due to DZ merely wiping his application hand on a tissue, rather than washing it....
So, what's he up to in the off-season?
Apparently he has just spent some time recording voice-overs for Garmin's SatNav system, as an optional extra for users to purchase - or possibly even to download for free. Here's a small sample:
Can you imagine that? My phone has sat-nav, and there is a nice calm lady who issues instructions, and who never, ever gets cross if I go the wrong way. (Well, would you take a left into a dead-end street at the start of a journey? No, and nor would I. SatNavs should always have intelligence applied to them.)
I can't quite imagine navigating with Dave Z yelling at me in American!
There is an option for a "Surfer Dude" voice, which was very funny for about ten minutes.....
....oh but wait, I'm having an idea......
(somewhere in Lux, a phone rings)
CG: "Andy, my pet, what are you doing this afternoon?"
Andy: "Errr, training, of course."
CG: "No you're not, it's raining and it's November, you've just returned from holiday, there is no way you are going out on the bike." (accusing tone of voice)
Andy: (hangs his head) "Well, maybe not, sorry."
CG: "OK, so what are you doing, really?"
Andy: "Oh, not much - Frankie and Martine have come round, we might head up to the folks' for dinner later on...."
CG: "Great! Can you get yourself down to the recording studio?"
Andy: (puzzled) "Errr, yes... but why?"
CG: "Oh, haven't you heard, Dave Zabriskie has done a set of guidance voice for Garmin."
Andy: "For sure, I read it this morning. "
CG: "So..... we thought it would be nice if you did one for us!"
Andy: "Really? You think that I should?"
CG: (breathes enthusiastically) "Oh yes, it would be nice, go on, please?"
Andy: "OK! For sure! "
There you go, definitely a best-seller. Wouldn't you want those dulcet tones telling you which way to go?
If you really can't remember it, I've kindly embedded it (below) so that you can relive the moment.
He has his own brand of cyclist-sore-patch-reduction cream, called DZ-nuts (for some reason I have just mis-typed that as DZ-buts, not once but three times) and he was rumoured to be producing a version for female cyclists - who apparently also suffer from chafing in the billowy portions - which, it was suggested, would be called DZ-lips. Thankfully, it was named "Bliss" instead. Less catchy, but considerably less tacky!
Here you go: and if you watch it right to the end - it's ok, it's not very long, and it doesn't get any "worse" than when it starts - you can see Tyler Farrar giving him a very strange look. Which could be due to DZ merely wiping his application hand on a tissue, rather than washing it....
So, what's he up to in the off-season?
Apparently he has just spent some time recording voice-overs for Garmin's SatNav system, as an optional extra for users to purchase - or possibly even to download for free. Here's a small sample:
Can you imagine that? My phone has sat-nav, and there is a nice calm lady who issues instructions, and who never, ever gets cross if I go the wrong way. (Well, would you take a left into a dead-end street at the start of a journey? No, and nor would I. SatNavs should always have intelligence applied to them.)
I can't quite imagine navigating with Dave Z yelling at me in American!
There is an option for a "Surfer Dude" voice, which was very funny for about ten minutes.....
....oh but wait, I'm having an idea......
(somewhere in Lux, a phone rings)
CG: "Andy, my pet, what are you doing this afternoon?"
Andy: "Errr, training, of course."
CG: "No you're not, it's raining and it's November, you've just returned from holiday, there is no way you are going out on the bike." (accusing tone of voice)
Andy: (hangs his head) "Well, maybe not, sorry."
CG: "OK, so what are you doing, really?"
Andy: "Oh, not much - Frankie and Martine have come round, we might head up to the folks' for dinner later on...."
CG: "Great! Can you get yourself down to the recording studio?"
Andy: (puzzled) "Errr, yes... but why?"
CG: "Oh, haven't you heard, Dave Zabriskie has done a set of guidance voice for Garmin."
Andy: "For sure, I read it this morning. "
CG: "So..... we thought it would be nice if you did one for us!"
Andy: "Really? You think that I should?"
CG: (breathes enthusiastically) "Oh yes, it would be nice, go on, please?"
Andy: "OK! For sure! "
There you go, definitely a best-seller. Wouldn't you want those dulcet tones telling you which way to go?
Saturday 5 November 2011
Sponsors get shafted, too!
As you all know, I have felt free to express my opinion on the poor performance of Mr Becca, and the way he broke the terms of his contract to support Leopard Trek for four years, without even explaining why.
I then did some research into sponsorship, and I read a book all about the Linda McCartney team and their problems, and I came to the inescapable conclusion that sponsors are fickle and elusive, and we just have to be grateful for what we get from them, and cannot really expect them to behave like professionals, disgraceful and annoying though that is.
Now I have realised that it goes both ways.
Eddie Merckx Cycles had a three year deal with Quickstep, and 2011 was the second year of that deal. Now Quickstep are merging with Omega-Pharma, and the new combined team have brought in a whole bunch of the HTC Highroad riders, along with their Specialized bikes.
So Specialized are taking over as bike supplier/sponsor for the team, and Eddie Merckx Cycles have been shoved out.
The news report contains lots of lovely positive phrases and quotes from Eddie Merckx Cycles, as you would expect, but I can almost feel the gritting of teeth going on underneath, can't you?
Does this make me feel better, knowing that sponsors can find their contracts to be worthless, and can find themselves thrown out at a moments' notice, just like the riders?
Well, no, actually: I would much prefer to live in a world where a contract is binding, and cannot be broken at a whim.
I then did some research into sponsorship, and I read a book all about the Linda McCartney team and their problems, and I came to the inescapable conclusion that sponsors are fickle and elusive, and we just have to be grateful for what we get from them, and cannot really expect them to behave like professionals, disgraceful and annoying though that is.
Now I have realised that it goes both ways.
Eddie Merckx Cycles had a three year deal with Quickstep, and 2011 was the second year of that deal. Now Quickstep are merging with Omega-Pharma, and the new combined team have brought in a whole bunch of the HTC Highroad riders, along with their Specialized bikes.
So Specialized are taking over as bike supplier/sponsor for the team, and Eddie Merckx Cycles have been shoved out.
The news report contains lots of lovely positive phrases and quotes from Eddie Merckx Cycles, as you would expect, but I can almost feel the gritting of teeth going on underneath, can't you?
Does this make me feel better, knowing that sponsors can find their contracts to be worthless, and can find themselves thrown out at a moments' notice, just like the riders?
Well, no, actually: I would much prefer to live in a world where a contract is binding, and cannot be broken at a whim.
Friday 4 November 2011
Teamwork: does it work?
Yes, of course it does, pro cycling is all about teamwork, we already know that. As they say, it's the only sport where an individual wins, but can't win without their team.
Some time ago, I speculated in a post about the difference which the new UCI rules would make to the life of a domestique. (Ah, "The Life of A Domestique", great title for a book, huh? Probably involving slavery, pot-scrubbing and general down-trodden-ness. But I digress. No surprise for any of you who read this blog regularly.)
You remember, as from this year, Points Mean Pro-Teams, and teams will need to acquire points in order to be eligible for the top rank of cycling.
Previously, domestiques used to be allowed to "have their day" and compete for a stage win, as a reward for their hard work. My thought was that this would no longer be allowed, as teams would need to concentrate all the points in as few riders as possible, as only the top 5 riders' points count towards the team score, and only the top 15 riders' scores count at the end of the year towards Pro-Team status.
So it would be a waste to have 20 riders with 10 points each: it would be much better to have the same 200 points spread over fewer riders.
Now, I thought that this was going to be bad for domestiques purely because they would no longer have their chance of glory, and that they would find this disappointing.
However, it's worse than that: teams are now scrabbling around to buy domestiques with points in order to make up their Pro-Team UCI point deficiencies, so a domestique with 20 points or so is suddenly worth a lot of money - and a domestique with no points is suddenly not worth anything, even though he has worked loyally and thoroughly throughout the season.
This can't be right! The life of a domestique was always a bit of a bugger - that's a technical term - as they quite literally did all the work, but received none of the glory. All their work was done in the first 100kms of the day, before the TV coverage, so they rarely had the joy of being "seen", and instead were always filmed limping across the finish lane as the podium presentations were taking place.
And now it's even worse than I'd thought: as LLB pointed out when we were discussing this point over dinner the other night - ah, how we live - the teams are going to actively prevent their domestiques from gaining any points, precisely to prevent them from being poached at the end of the season. So not only will they no longer be given their day, they will now be instructed to exhaust themselves, even if it's not strictly necessary, in order to ensure that they don't accidentally pick up any UCI points.
How mean!
AT long last, nearly a year after me starting to say this, the riders themselves are beginning to realise that this is going to be a problem, and I was interested to read one of the departing Shack riders having a rant on this exact subject. Of course, he's miffed at his team merging without warning, but his points are all valid.
The rider in question is Geoffroy Lequatre, and he suggests that next season, "People will ride for themselves instead of for their leaders" which is going to require what he calls a different mentality, which might well change the whole spirit of the sport.
I agree with him that this is entirely possible, and I am adamant that this is not a good thing!
His suggestion is that riders should share in the points awarded to the stage and race winners, in the same way that they share in the prize money.
This could be an excellent way out of the problem: my immediate thought is to say that within each race, the rider who actually wins the stage/sprint/kom etc gets the points and the glory. But afterwards, all the team members receive "ghost points" equalling that of the winner. These points remain with the individual rider, are added into the UCI rankings, and are carried forward by the individual rider into the next season.
Sprint points and KOM points are different, they should stay just with the rider who won them. I think it is absurd for non-climbers to win KOM points, unless they really are the first person over the top, in which case they damned well deserve it! I also think there should be TT points.
This will have the effect of increasing the total number of points in the rankings, but I can't see that being a problem.
Now, I haven't really sat down with a spreadsheet to work through the details, so I would be very happy to see any suggestions for making this work more smoothly.
Then we can send it off to the UCI, ha ha!
Some time ago, I speculated in a post about the difference which the new UCI rules would make to the life of a domestique. (Ah, "The Life of A Domestique", great title for a book, huh? Probably involving slavery, pot-scrubbing and general down-trodden-ness. But I digress. No surprise for any of you who read this blog regularly.)
You remember, as from this year, Points Mean Pro-Teams, and teams will need to acquire points in order to be eligible for the top rank of cycling.
Previously, domestiques used to be allowed to "have their day" and compete for a stage win, as a reward for their hard work. My thought was that this would no longer be allowed, as teams would need to concentrate all the points in as few riders as possible, as only the top 5 riders' points count towards the team score, and only the top 15 riders' scores count at the end of the year towards Pro-Team status.
So it would be a waste to have 20 riders with 10 points each: it would be much better to have the same 200 points spread over fewer riders.
Now, I thought that this was going to be bad for domestiques purely because they would no longer have their chance of glory, and that they would find this disappointing.
However, it's worse than that: teams are now scrabbling around to buy domestiques with points in order to make up their Pro-Team UCI point deficiencies, so a domestique with 20 points or so is suddenly worth a lot of money - and a domestique with no points is suddenly not worth anything, even though he has worked loyally and thoroughly throughout the season.
This can't be right! The life of a domestique was always a bit of a bugger - that's a technical term - as they quite literally did all the work, but received none of the glory. All their work was done in the first 100kms of the day, before the TV coverage, so they rarely had the joy of being "seen", and instead were always filmed limping across the finish lane as the podium presentations were taking place.
And now it's even worse than I'd thought: as LLB pointed out when we were discussing this point over dinner the other night - ah, how we live - the teams are going to actively prevent their domestiques from gaining any points, precisely to prevent them from being poached at the end of the season. So not only will they no longer be given their day, they will now be instructed to exhaust themselves, even if it's not strictly necessary, in order to ensure that they don't accidentally pick up any UCI points.
How mean!
AT long last, nearly a year after me starting to say this, the riders themselves are beginning to realise that this is going to be a problem, and I was interested to read one of the departing Shack riders having a rant on this exact subject. Of course, he's miffed at his team merging without warning, but his points are all valid.
The rider in question is Geoffroy Lequatre, and he suggests that next season, "People will ride for themselves instead of for their leaders" which is going to require what he calls a different mentality, which might well change the whole spirit of the sport.
I agree with him that this is entirely possible, and I am adamant that this is not a good thing!
His suggestion is that riders should share in the points awarded to the stage and race winners, in the same way that they share in the prize money.
This could be an excellent way out of the problem: my immediate thought is to say that within each race, the rider who actually wins the stage/sprint/kom etc gets the points and the glory. But afterwards, all the team members receive "ghost points" equalling that of the winner. These points remain with the individual rider, are added into the UCI rankings, and are carried forward by the individual rider into the next season.
Sprint points and KOM points are different, they should stay just with the rider who won them. I think it is absurd for non-climbers to win KOM points, unless they really are the first person over the top, in which case they damned well deserve it! I also think there should be TT points.
This will have the effect of increasing the total number of points in the rankings, but I can't see that being a problem.
Now, I haven't really sat down with a spreadsheet to work through the details, so I would be very happy to see any suggestions for making this work more smoothly.
Then we can send it off to the UCI, ha ha!
Thursday 3 November 2011
Andy in Ice Bath Shocker!
What a terrible thought, OGL shivering in an ice bath.
But yes, it's true: well, I read it on the internet, so it might be true, it might not be true... who can tell.
And it's all in search of that Maillot Jaune again. As we all know, Andy and Frank are both Top 20 In The World time triallists, but that's not quite good enough, apparently, so they are continuing in their quest to improve, aided (?) by the stern face and strong right arm of Mr Bruyneel.
The weight of this responsibility falls on Josué Arán, their chiropractor. He's been working with them for a year and a half, mind you - it's not as though he's some Bruyneel Wonder-Wind-Tunnel expert, brought in to whip them into shape. No, he's been doing his best for some time, but now things are shifting up a gear.
In an interview reported by good old Velonation, he said "They were so good from birth, they have so much class, that they believed they didn’t have to do anything.” Oops, that doesn't sound very good.
“One day I told them was wrong and yes, they are very good, but they can progress." Oh dear, has OGL been refusing to listen to his advisors?
So now they are having to be good boys, and do special exercises three times a week Three times a week? If I were them, striving to be a Tour winner and sick and tired of people making stupid remarks about my TT ability, I'd be doing those exercises three times a day!
Oh, and they get a change of diet as well - not so much of the "duuuurty meat" that they love, and a bit more of the "protein shakes" (ugh, shudder, sounds terrible).
And lastly, they get the ice baths. I kid you not, the article ended by saying "and also employing ice baths to recover from tough training sessions."
Ugh, shudder, once again. Pass the fluffy towelling robe, someone.
Other news for today: I was getting a bit tired of my Twitter logo, the crying one - right.
There is a time to cry, and then there is a time to stop crying and just get on with it.
So, in the absence of any word about the team kit, or team logo, let alone what the name of the team is going to be, I had to extrapolate. Or, if you prefer, make something up.
I started with the Radioshack logo, as they are the main sponsor.
Not terribly nice, but it sort of worked - I put it up on Twitter, and send a tweet to Ken Sommer asking him what he thought about it.
Received an instant response, ha ha! Don't forget that you have to read from the bottom up.
"I would rather put a rusty needle through my eye than look at that again...." said Ken.
LOL! As they say. That's quite a reaction! Is Ken not fully on board with the new sponsor? Or was it because I'd changed his lovely neat logo for something a bit out-of-shape and unbalanced, do we think? In my own defence, I would say that I did it really quickly.....
Anyway, as I don't want to upset him, I immediately changed it for a pic of my work shirts with the normal Leopard logo on them, but after a while I thought that no-one else is going to be interested in what I wear for work... so I changed it for the Dominic Orange-Head/Beaker one. I'm sure you all remember that one.. then I thought that Leelu would probably kill me, so I quickly swapped it for the Stefan Denifl one.
I've left it at that for the time being, as some of my Tweeps - VirtKitty, that means you - were complaining about the confusion that my constant changes were creating.
But it can't stay for long, as Stefan isdeserting us being given the shove going to another team, Vacansoleil. Oh, and yes, I have updated the New Team page, above. Although I think the Shack riders section is not quite accurate!
Anyway, I'm not quite sure what logo to go with now, so any suggestions would be welcome.
Another of my Tweeps, Deborah, was asking if I had a Cancellara Leo Logo (hey, Leo-go, that's a good name for them: such a pity I didn't think of it about a year ago) and I had to say that I didn't. She said that was a shame, she would have liked to have seen it.
Oh all right then, here it is:
And no, not spots, that's supposed to be his designer stubble....
...oh well, it will have to do until I think of something better, or until Ken releases some details about next year's kit.
Mind you, terrible news, it might all be going pear-shaped as the UCI have not granted RadioShack-Nissan-Trek-Leopard-Whatever a Pro Team licence for next year. Not yet, anyway.
Yes, truthfully, big scandal: after announcing recently the 15 teams - including Shack/Leo - that were pretty much okayed to be Pro-Teams, they have now announced that only the following 8 teams have been granted licences:
Astana Pro Team KAZ
BMC Racing Team USA
Garmin-Cervélo USA
Lampre - ISD ITA
Liquigas - Cannondale ITA
Movistar Team ESP
Rabobank NED
Sky Procycling GBR
Ten more teams - to make up the total of 18 Pro-Teams that we are expecting - are having to appear before the UCI Licence Commission, which is normal procedure:-
Two of them are new teams: GreenEdge and Lotto.
Three of them were due to have licences renewed anyway, they are SaxoBank, Omega-Pharma/Quickstep, and Katusha.
Three are seeking to move up from Pro-Continental (2nd league), they are Geox (although that might come to nothing as they still don't have a sponsor), Frances de Jour and Europcar, home of Tommy Voeckler.
Two are the ones lower down the first league, clinging on in the face of relegation - Euskaltel, and AG2R.
And in addition to those 10 + 8, RadioShack-Nissan and Vacansoleil DCM are also going to have to appear - the only squads who currently hold ProTeam licences to be declined at this point.
Worrying!
No-one seems to know why: the UCI are, as always, hiding behind their soul-sucking rules and regulations, and the two teams concerned don't know exactly why they have been declined. The general impression seems to be that it's only paperwork issues, but then that's how the Geox problem first hit the light of day: "where's our bond, then?"
So fingers, toes, eyes and everything else crossed that it really is ONLY paperwork, and that it all gets done on time.. we won't know until the 18th November. And on the 21st November, Contador's final (?) hearing starts....
Who said the off-season was going to be dull?
But yes, it's true: well, I read it on the internet, so it might be true, it might not be true... who can tell.
And it's all in search of that Maillot Jaune again. As we all know, Andy and Frank are both Top 20 In The World time triallists, but that's not quite good enough, apparently, so they are continuing in their quest to improve, aided (?) by the stern face and strong right arm of Mr Bruyneel.
The weight of this responsibility falls on Josué Arán, their chiropractor. He's been working with them for a year and a half, mind you - it's not as though he's some Bruyneel Wonder-Wind-Tunnel expert, brought in to whip them into shape. No, he's been doing his best for some time, but now things are shifting up a gear.
In an interview reported by good old Velonation, he said "They were so good from birth, they have so much class, that they believed they didn’t have to do anything.” Oops, that doesn't sound very good.
“One day I told them was wrong and yes, they are very good, but they can progress." Oh dear, has OGL been refusing to listen to his advisors?
So now they are having to be good boys, and do special exercises three times a week Three times a week? If I were them, striving to be a Tour winner and sick and tired of people making stupid remarks about my TT ability, I'd be doing those exercises three times a day!
Oh, and they get a change of diet as well - not so much of the "duuuurty meat" that they love, and a bit more of the "protein shakes" (ugh, shudder, sounds terrible).
And lastly, they get the ice baths. I kid you not, the article ended by saying "and also employing ice baths to recover from tough training sessions."
Ugh, shudder, once again. Pass the fluffy towelling robe, someone.
There is a time to cry, and then there is a time to stop crying and just get on with it.
So, in the absence of any word about the team kit, or team logo, let alone what the name of the team is going to be, I had to extrapolate. Or, if you prefer, make something up.
I started with the Radioshack logo, as they are the main sponsor.
Not terribly nice, but it sort of worked - I put it up on Twitter, and send a tweet to Ken Sommer asking him what he thought about it.
Received an instant response, ha ha! Don't forget that you have to read from the bottom up.
"I would rather put a rusty needle through my eye than look at that again...." said Ken.
LOL! As they say. That's quite a reaction! Is Ken not fully on board with the new sponsor? Or was it because I'd changed his lovely neat logo for something a bit out-of-shape and unbalanced, do we think? In my own defence, I would say that I did it really quickly.....
Anyway, as I don't want to upset him, I immediately changed it for a pic of my work shirts with the normal Leopard logo on them, but after a while I thought that no-one else is going to be interested in what I wear for work... so I changed it for the Dominic Orange-Head/Beaker one. I'm sure you all remember that one.. then I thought that Leelu would probably kill me, so I quickly swapped it for the Stefan Denifl one.
But it can't stay for long, as Stefan is
Anyway, I'm not quite sure what logo to go with now, so any suggestions would be welcome.
Another of my Tweeps, Deborah, was asking if I had a Cancellara Leo Logo (hey, Leo-go, that's a good name for them: such a pity I didn't think of it about a year ago) and I had to say that I didn't. She said that was a shame, she would have liked to have seen it.
Oh all right then, here it is:
And no, not spots, that's supposed to be his designer stubble....
...oh well, it will have to do until I think of something better, or until Ken releases some details about next year's kit.
Mind you, terrible news, it might all be going pear-shaped as the UCI have not granted RadioShack-Nissan-Trek-Leopard-Whatever a Pro Team licence for next year. Not yet, anyway.
Yes, truthfully, big scandal: after announcing recently the 15 teams - including Shack/Leo - that were pretty much okayed to be Pro-Teams, they have now announced that only the following 8 teams have been granted licences:
Astana Pro Team KAZ
BMC Racing Team USA
Garmin-Cervélo USA
Lampre - ISD ITA
Liquigas - Cannondale ITA
Movistar Team ESP
Rabobank NED
Sky Procycling GBR
Ten more teams - to make up the total of 18 Pro-Teams that we are expecting - are having to appear before the UCI Licence Commission, which is normal procedure:-
Two of them are new teams: GreenEdge and Lotto.
Three of them were due to have licences renewed anyway, they are SaxoBank, Omega-Pharma/Quickstep, and Katusha.
Three are seeking to move up from Pro-Continental (2nd league), they are Geox (although that might come to nothing as they still don't have a sponsor), Frances de Jour and Europcar, home of Tommy Voeckler.
Two are the ones lower down the first league, clinging on in the face of relegation - Euskaltel, and AG2R.
And in addition to those 10 + 8, RadioShack-Nissan and Vacansoleil DCM are also going to have to appear - the only squads who currently hold ProTeam licences to be declined at this point.
Worrying!
No-one seems to know why: the UCI are, as always, hiding behind their soul-sucking rules and regulations, and the two teams concerned don't know exactly why they have been declined. The general impression seems to be that it's only paperwork issues, but then that's how the Geox problem first hit the light of day: "where's our bond, then?"
So fingers, toes, eyes and everything else crossed that it really is ONLY paperwork, and that it all gets done on time.. we won't know until the 18th November. And on the 21st November, Contador's final (?) hearing starts....
Who said the off-season was going to be dull?
Friday 28 October 2011
Andy Schleck Undergoes Mind Control to Improve TT!
Yes folks, you heard it here first: in a desperate attempt to improve his time trialling, or, what's more to the point, to avoid having to undergo Mr Bruyneel's "Special Wind Tunnel Testing" about which we have heard so little - but imagined so much - Andy is trying a new, psychological method: thought control, from Fabian.
Well, think abut it, it makes a lot of sense: Fab is far and away the best TTer around - yes, yes, I know Tony Martin won the jersey at the Worlds, but honestly, Fab's been a bit busy this year, and anyway, we know he's the best.
So, what we need is for Andy - and Frankie, for that matter, but Andy has bravely volunteered to be the guinea pig - to absorb some of Fabian's skill at choosing lines, avoiding hazards etc.
To this end, Leopard have invented a new procedure whereby Andy and Fabian are linked together mentally, and this was first tested at the Tour. Andy was, of course, in the team car just behind Fabian when he went out for his TT run: they need to keep their brains within a narrow range of one other, otherwise Andy would "lose the signal".
As we know, it was fairly successful, as Andy did what was possibly the best TT of his career so far.
Now that we are in the "off" season, they have a chance to really develop the technique, and iron out some of the side effects: one of which is that Andy sometimes finds himself repeating what Fabian is saying.
As an example, on Twitter today:
Spot the difference!
Of course, I initially wondered it if was a simple admin error, so I checked with Ken Sommer.
When I say "checked with", I actually mean "blatantly and rather rudely accused".
However, Ken is a true gentleman, and always takes these things well:
There is a tweet from Ken missing - he is worse than Figgy for deleting his tweets, I tell you - as he replied to my first tweet by saying
"@SchlecklanderCG I am innocent!"
To which I replied "I doubt that!" *sniggers", as you can see.
OK, you do realise that I was joking about the mind control, don't you? Good.
Frankie was a bit more sensible on the subject of the first meeting of the new team: he said:
There, much better, well done Frankie!
So, all jokes about using each other's phones aside, it's good to hear that they are upbeat about next year.
Mr Bruyneel hasn't updated his blog yet, but it will be interesting (won't it?) to hear his take on the meeting.
Well, think abut it, it makes a lot of sense: Fab is far and away the best TTer around - yes, yes, I know Tony Martin won the jersey at the Worlds, but honestly, Fab's been a bit busy this year, and anyway, we know he's the best.
So, what we need is for Andy - and Frankie, for that matter, but Andy has bravely volunteered to be the guinea pig - to absorb some of Fabian's skill at choosing lines, avoiding hazards etc.
To this end, Leopard have invented a new procedure whereby Andy and Fabian are linked together mentally, and this was first tested at the Tour. Andy was, of course, in the team car just behind Fabian when he went out for his TT run: they need to keep their brains within a narrow range of one other, otherwise Andy would "lose the signal".
As we know, it was fairly successful, as Andy did what was possibly the best TT of his career so far.
Now that we are in the "off" season, they have a chance to really develop the technique, and iron out some of the side effects: one of which is that Andy sometimes finds himself repeating what Fabian is saying.
As an example, on Twitter today:
Spot the difference!
Of course, I initially wondered it if was a simple admin error, so I checked with Ken Sommer.
When I say "checked with", I actually mean "blatantly and rather rudely accused".
However, Ken is a true gentleman, and always takes these things well:
There is a tweet from Ken missing - he is worse than Figgy for deleting his tweets, I tell you - as he replied to my first tweet by saying
"@SchlecklanderCG I am innocent!"
To which I replied "I doubt that!" *sniggers", as you can see.
OK, you do realise that I was joking about the mind control, don't you? Good.
Frankie was a bit more sensible on the subject of the first meeting of the new team: he said:
So, all jokes about using each other's phones aside, it's good to hear that they are upbeat about next year.
Mr Bruyneel hasn't updated his blog yet, but it will be interesting (won't it?) to hear his take on the meeting.
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