Whew! A day of rich drama and intrigue such as seldom graces the cycling world in February—and remarkably, most of it is due to racing.

It all started at the Tour of Oman, which was introduced to the peloton’s pre-season swing through the Persian Gulf presumably to counterbalance the relentless flatness of last week’s Tour of Qatar.

After two sprint finishes (Jimmy Casper and Daniele Bennati, if anyone’s curious) the third stage seemed to unfold no differently, with Team Sky controlling the race and delivering race leader Edvald Boasson-Hagen to a group sprint win.

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You know what I think it is? I think it’s the lack of top-flight competition. It’s not that Etoile de Besseges, Trofeo Mallorca or Tour of Qatar don’t feature some of the best riders in the world—Bozic isn’t exactly a flat iron, after all—it’s that too many of them are holding back in an effort to keep the powder dry.

The days are gone when riders came into Paris-Nice fat, slow, and cowering. Even the riders who are still tuning up are fit, and if push came to shove, the top names could probably throw down with near-peak intensity. But prudence, the ever-present radio, and good coaching intervene, leaving the mouth as the only outlet for the naked aggression that makes splits and wins bike races.

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The American cycling fan has but one dream. It can be roughly summed up by the plot of the 2002 film The Rookie—reaching the pro ranks in middle age by finally getting a chance to develop your long-neglected (or in most cases, completely hidden) talent.

And in case you’ve been stuck at the back of the team van for the past two months, it actually happened this year, to Bicycling Magazine’s Joao Correia.

I think it’s pretty cool—despite my suspicion that it couldn’t have happened without the industry connection, and despite the fact that it makes an obscenely good story for a former member of the media—but man, does he have to be such a friggin’ n00b about it?

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I realize that 2007 was indeed a very open Tour, but I think Cyclingnews may have been enjoying a joke at our expense when they wrote up this preview:

In fairness, Moreau had indeed been putting down some of his best post-Festina riding in 2007, winning the Dauphine and even hanging with the leaders as they made some uncharacteristically soft attacks in the early TdF climbs.

But Moreau has a long history of needing excuses. When the GC race got tight, the Frenchmen found himself caught out by a field-splitting move from a Vino’-led Astana squad, and it was all downhill from there.

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Is January too early to talk about the Tour de France? Of course not—at least, not when the Tour is the only cycling event your employer bothers to cover live, and especially not when that employer is the Network formerly known as “Only Lance” and you’re bashing the chief rival of a certain well-known Texan.

While anything Bob Roll writes must be taken with a MassDOT-sized serving of salt, Joe Parkin’s commentary tends to be quite insightful. So when he writes that “Contador has weaknesses in his armor that leave many of the great champions who preceded him absolutely dumbfounded”, I’m teetering on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear exactly what those weaknesses are. Sadly, the A Dog in a Hat author doesn’t deliver any details.

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If you’ve noticed the distinct, sharp-edge whiff of bile around the cycling world at the moment, don’t attribute it entirely to an excess of cheer at various holiday gatherings. Headlines at the end of the year—and the end of a decade, especially—always seem to reek more of regurgitation than perspiration.


It’s not that I’m above a year-end retrospective; I’ve done it at least once, and frankly, despite the four years that have transpired between then and now, that post is still one of the best end-of-year recaps around.

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Nothing like a little holiday regifting to shake the wintertime rust off things in the cycling world. Today’s gently reheated offering is the Astana transfusion case, courtesy of French daily Le Monde. It’s a story that will sound extremely familiar because since its last incarnation in early October, that facts of the case remain completely unchanged—only the confirmation of a French investigation has returned it to the headlines.

To be honest, I think the story is something of a dog. As plenty of people have pointed out, dumping your doping gear in the trash would be all kinds of idiotic, since anyone with determination and the ability ignore strong odors has access to it; indeed, French journalists have made great sport of dumpster diving in the past.

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Right off the bat, the title should give you a hint that you might want to take this one with a grain of salt. Or several.

That said, despite regularly producing some of the most original, creative, highest quality work in the cycling world for the past four years, there’s a fair amount of respect I’m not getting. I don’t think there’s anyone out there doing what I do or even coming close to it—certainly not the people collecting redirects from the parties targeted above.

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I’d love to say I told you so, but check out the date “published” and date “updated” in this shot. If Cyclingnews is no longer bound by the laws of time and space, can we still trust their reporting?

Also, note that it only says Sky expected to announce a signing. It doesn’t say whether that announcement will be accurate.

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Oh yes. After weeks of mind-numbing backroom dealing (Will Contador go to Astana? Will Astana get a UCI license?) the trash talking is finally here.

And who better to kick it off than the psychological master himself, Johan Bruyneel, who recently cast Contador as a superstar unable to come to grips with his meteroic fame—in words that seem more suited to Lindsay Lohan than the TdF champ—in an interview with the Belgian magazine Knack.

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