Archive | July, 2006

2006 Tour de France – Stages 2-4 Recap

6 Jul

You may have thought, with so many favoites under dope suspensions, and with Jimmy Casper winning Stage 1, that this was going to be an utterly out-of-the-ordinary Tour de France. Well, wrong you are. Stages 2-4 contained Robbie McEwen stage wins 9 and 10, a late flyer for victory, a GC contender crashing out, the pointless relegation of a non-French rider, and lots of cows; all fairly common occurrences during the opening week. Perhaps the only real unusual thing to happen at this year’s Tour has been the inability of Boonen to win a sprint without his train. This guy is supposed to be a classics rider, right?

2006 Tour de France, Stage 1

2 Jul

It was an ugly sprint won beautifully by Cofidis’ Jimmy Casper. Globs of riders bounced all across the road as Milram’s Erik Zabel (500m) and Quick.Step’s Tom Boonen (300m) found themselves unexpectedly out in the wind. The crafty German reintegrated between Davitamon’s Robbie McEwen and Liquigas’ Magnus Backsteadt, but the Flandrian tried get fancy, peeping back over his shoulder to react to riders as they came around him. Casper, perhaps realizing that Boonen’s attempt to lead himself out would doubtlessly end in failure, lunged up the right side of the field. Tornado Tom eventually tired, leaving most of the sprinters pinned in against the barriers behind him. Zabel, McEwen and Bennatti managed to slip free, but it was deck chairs on the Titanic as they could only catch the tiny Frenchman meters after the line, as he made an unorthodox hand-biting salute.

Cycling’s Kangaroo Court Rolls On, Tour Prologue 2006

2 Jul

So we’re still waiting on that evidence. Here’s (scroll down) what we’ve got so far, and (in America, at least) it couldn’t convict a sex addict in a cathouse. Thankfully, the entire world hasn’t gone mad; Tyler Hamilton’s lawyer also thinks that having nothing more than paté on pressboard to back up these suspensions is a bad thing – and as far as I’m concerned, that leaves me in piss poor company (sorry, Howard). My dear, dear friends at the Journal of Competitive Cycling (hugs and kisses all around) have gone through the trouble of pointing out in a mailbox column (scroll down) that this is all in line with the ProTour Ethics code, but, exercising possibly the worst journalistic judgement ever, they neglect to add that it still doesn’t make this OK. Way to take a fµ¢&ing stand for basic human rights.

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