Looks like a made a boo-boo on the category selection. Seems Paolo Betinni is not racing the Tour this year, making my Cookie’s Revenge category utterly pointless. Ah well. I could swap in some other token Eyetai, but it really wouldn’t be the same. Perhaps more relevant to the larger cycling world, another garrulous Italian, two-time Giro champ Gilberto Simoni, will also be sitting out this year’s race. Given his performance in the TdF as of late, I do not blame him.

Ok, geniuses, time for a quiz: Which of the following will NOT make you a better climber:

a) EPO
b) Losing some weight, tubby
c) A compact crankset
d) Training

If you answered C, congratulations; you are now officially smarter than the entire marketing staff at Excel Sports thinks you are. Compact cranksets do not make you a better climber. In fact, they make you a slower climber. “What?” you shout indignantly, having spent 400 dollars on a 50/34 FSA SL-K with MegaExo BB. “I can now make it up [local climb of moderate difficulty] without stopping every 10 minutes.” Hey, good for you. I hope you keep at this whole “cycling” thing. But the fact is, your speed on a bicycle is determined by only two things:

Man, it’s a good thing Lance crashed today. Elsewise there’d be no news (other than boooooring Euro National Championships). The 6 time Tour winner smashed his helmet into two pieces during a low-speed impact before TT training ride, suffering facial abrasions and a black eye. Kind of makes me wonder just how well Giro is testing those TT helmets. I’ll make a note not to crash on one at speeds in excess of 5 mph.

The product reviews here at Cyclocosm aim to be a bit different than on other sites. We tell you as much as possible, as quickly as possible. The testers decide what traits of a product are important to that product’s not sucking, then rate those traits 1-5, with 3 being the industry standard. No overall score is given, as different people will want different things from each product.

Hosted by Bob Roll, Featuring Lance, Jan, many other riders, Color, 104min, MSRP $24.95.

Originality 4. Nothing new about a bike racing compilation. All crashes, though, is a new development.

The product reviews here at Cyclocosm aim to be a bit different than on other sites. We tell you as much as possible, as quickly as possible. The testers decide what traits of a product are important to that product’s not sucking, then rate those traits 1-5, with 3 being the industry standard. No overall score is given, as different people will want different things from each product.

Crankset, Aluminum, 53/39, 170mm, 592g, MSRP $199.99 (widely available for less).

Looks: 4. What component draws more attention than your crankset? Machined, black-anodized aluminum looks sweet and industrial in world dominated by shininess and rounded carbon weave.

Have you ever noticed this? The closer we get to the tour, the less news we hear about it? I mean, sure, like the day before you get a freaking deluge of Tech news, inside information course previews, etc., but right now, it’s just a huge empty news vacuum. The only thing I can find that’s even remotely interesting is that Sandy Casar crashed “over a wall” in the recent French TT Championships. “Over a wall.” Good to hear he didn’t half ass it by just bumping into the wall and falling down.

So I read today in Sports Illustrated that Lance “doesn’t plan on losing his 7th Tour.” Damn, the news business is easy these days. Inside, there was a painfully basic (but well written for a layman audience) on the outlook for this year’s TdF. Items of note: Floyd Landis describing this year’s Discovery Tour sqaud as “The weakest team I’ve seen since I joined [Lance's] team,” and all but promising a Phonak victory in this year’s TTT. Floyd also got in a nice product placement, suggesting after Lance popped out of his pedal during the Dauphine TT that he “try one of my Speedplay pedals.” Nice.

So by “News” in the title of this post, I mean, of course, that after a week in the wilds of Alaska, there is none. Aitor Gonzalez won the Tour de Suisse. Big deal. “The TerminAitor” (as the Aussies style him; only an antipodean could so mangle English to make that beleagured moniker make a lick of sense) wins like one important race a year and then takes the slow boat back to No-Result Island. Fresh off the “Even Older News” file, another Orangeman, Inigo Landaluze, took the overall win at Dauphine (the “other” TdF tune-up), ahead of such no-names as Levi Leipheimer, Alexandre Vinokourov, Santiago Botero and Lance Armstrong, leading me to believe that Landaluze will now go on to b the first man to win 7 consecutive Tours de France between now and 2011. Remember, you read it here first.

After years of being “oh yeah, that guy,” American Levi Leipheimer is looking like a big threat to Lance’s quest for number 7. The Gerolsteiner rider took second by a second for the second time in the Dauphine, bested over the 47k TT only by Phonak’s Santiago Botero, who is himself looking no chump for the upcoming race. Lance was 3rd, 26 seconds back, which based on the Texan’s past Dauphine performances, doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. On the next stage, which sent riders to the top of Mount Ventoux, Levi remained calm, losing no more than a handful of seconds to his GC rivals, while Alexandre Vinokourov took the stage win. Botero lost over two minutes, boosting Armstrong to second on GC, some 21 ticks back.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so you are all no doubt bummed to see that I am no longer absent. We have some catching up to do. Dauphine – Hincapie wins the prologue, one of four Americans (Leiphiemer, Landis and Armstrong were the others) in the top 5. Lance plays superdomestique for a day while Thor Hushovd takes the stage, until stage three when four frenchmen broke away, the eventual spoils going to Sam Dumolin.