They certainly have end-loaded this year’s Giro. After nine days (don’t forget to check out stages 1 through 4), lots of probing GC moves, lots of rain, lots of heads-up racing—which is what I think you want out of the early going in a Grand Tour. I could perhaps stand to see a few more sprint stages, but being entirely honest, those guys get enough chances to win already, don’t they?

[click for iPad/iPhone/download]

Anyway, I’m on pins-and-needles for Tuesday’s hilltop throw-down. Hoping Ryder can steal back some time while the Top 10 watch each other, but it might also be nice to see Evans or Gesink throw a punch or two.

I’ve had a pretty good run with HTRWW this spring, but last Tuesday, a few things went wrong. A perfect storm, if you will. The still-buggy result is this Lost Episode—scheduled to go live last Wednesday, offered now (along with stages 5 through 9) because it’s a rest day and you’ve got nothing to do until Tour of California this evening.

[click for iPad/iPhone/download]

Script

(not verbatim, contains typos, and sometimes I go off-book)

Yes, the Rancast is back this week, with more-or-less proper intro music—more on that later. But I’m going to surprise most you today by NOT ranting about BeINSport’s Giro coverage—or at least few miserable dribbles of it (dribbels of the not-on-nosebleed-cable or dish package variety) that my eyeballs—and most other eyeballs across this great nation—have access to. No I’m saving that for next week, and giving BeIN seven more days to get their act together. AS my fellow Dartmouth alumnus Steven Colbert would say, BeIn Sport, you’re on notice.

Script

(not verbatim, contains typos, and sometimes I go off-book)

Let’s talk for a moment about why anyone would sponsor a cycling team. It’s such a bizarre relationship—between 5 and 20 million Euros or the equivalent in dollars or bitcoins, and effectively get no tangible return. They don’t own the team, or the rider contracts, or its license to enter events, and they don’t collect a share of the winnings when it does well. I dunno, maybe sponsors get a cut from sales of jerseys or team-issue bikes…but, other than that…

A hilly stage race that—were it not for some lousy weather—might not have even had a hilltop finish. Still, the tight time gaps lead to some hard chasing and interesting sprints, and a renewed appreciation on the part of yours truly for the skills of Gianni Meersman.

[click for iPad/iPhone/download]

The race was also a bit of a blow for the Sky-is-Doping storyline. Yes, the team controlled the racing, but they didn’t dominate it, relying more heavily on sprinters’ teams and Movistar toward the end of the event, and coming apart almost completely on the final hilly stage.

Script

(not verbatim, contains typos, and sometimes I go off-book)

Today’s rant is abbreviated and delayed somewhat by time and circumstance. If you haven’t been following me on twitter, or haven’t seen the previous post at Cyclocosm.com, then you don’t know that I spent yesterday riding from my home base in Hartford CT, to New York City as part of of the Ride on Washington. If I sound a little different it’s because I’m recording a fabulous Brooklyn studio gazing out over the rooftops at the Kentile Sign and VZ bridge.

Just a quick update: I’m jumping into the second leg of the Ride on Washington today. I’ll be doing my best to live-tweet antics on @Cyclocosm, and, as an added bonus, if you chip in $20 of the $500 I promised to raise, I’ll do a mini-rant cast on the topic if your choice!

Coming into this Sunday, there were a lot of big squads without a classics win, and only one classic left on the table. One came good with some spectacular teamwork and and cool-as-a-cucumber riding.

Also featured—more electronic shifting follies, some road blocking, an arm sling, over-aggressive spectators and a gigantic panda costume. What’s not to like?

[click for iPad/iPhone/download]

Script

(not verbatim, contains typos, and sometimes I go off-book)


SRAM, SRAM, SRAM, sram…I don’t really dislike you guys—it’s just bad timing. No, I’m not complaining about the ham-handed marketing of having a launch event and then embargoing it for three days in this interconnected, live-tweeted milieu, or that you’re offering hydraulic road brakes—despite being not strictly necessary, and entirely incompatible with everything else on the market, from a mechanical standpoint, they could conceivably address the few pertinent issues present in cable-actuated brakes.

Did a course tweak just work out? Certainly the race-winning move employed the aggression and pluck that had been missing from the (successful) attacks in previous editions. And the cast of characters battling at the front brought some new names and new faces to the fore.

[click for iPad/iPhone/download]

Also, I could have spent all day riffing on the technical errors in the race video production—bad or absent time checks, cameras missing important attacks, and a 5 minute gap in the production feed covered sloppily by 60fps replays—which, honestly, were of such irrelevant things that I wondered a if the producers had ever seen a bike race before.