The Official 2006 Tour Logo. Hasn’t been much tugging on the jersey this year.

We’re nearly a week into the Tour de France, and yet the race’s most obvious prize remains awarded based on a handful of seconds’ from the event’s first seven minutes. Is this any way to encourage quality racing on the sport’s biggest stage?

I understand the arguments against bonus seconds—the best example is probably Levi Leipheimer—but I think they’re too often deeply rooted in an arbitrary notion of what constitutes “fair”.

Bike racing is as sport with many facets, and if a GC contenter can mix it up in a sprint or short, sharp finish climb, that’s a skill that should count toward an overall win. It’s not like the three-week runtime of a modern Grand Tour leaves any GC contender with a shortage of opportunities to peel back that few seconds’ advantage.

Despite—and in many ways, because of—my immersion in American culture, I am well aware of its many dislikable aspects. Conspicuous consumption. An increasingly embarrassing income gap. The wholesale embrace of opinion without the discomfort of thought on both ends of the political spectrum. But what I simply do not understand is profound toxicity of the American brand in the upper echelons of European cycling.

I get the fatigue aspect—seven Tour wins, the cynics, the comeback, chair you’re sitting on, etc. Anyone who denies a touch of eye glaze around 2004 or so clearly isn’t a cycling fan. But time after time, when one European cycling group seeks to discredit another, the American card is one of the first played.

Sympathy for the Devil

I’m not an especially big fan of the UCI, but don’t let the apparel fool you—they’re far from useless. In the past two decades, the governing body has actually made some pretty solid steps for the sport.

When I began following cycling about a decade ago, most sponsors were essentially unknown to me—small French and Italian firms like Bonjour and Pata-Chips. But a concerted effort from the UCI to entice bigger, more secure, more international backers has lead to a host of brands I’d heard of before—Columbia, HTC, Discovery Channel, T-Mobile, Skype, RadioShack, Garmin, Transitions, Chipotle, to name a few—at least dabbling in the sport since then.

Craig Lewis is dead-on about the outright quality of Montepaschi Strade Bianche in his most recent Versus post. The race is sensational, but unfortunately, that’s why the UCI will likely do everything in its power to keep it out of cycling’s top tier for the foreseeable future.

Strade Bianche was founded and is organized by RCS, the Italian Media Conglomerate that owns the Giro, Milan-Senremo, Tour of Lombardy, Tirreno-Adriatico and (I believe) a few other notable Italian Races as well.

Going to a take a bit of a break from the drama and talk about the TdU today. After all, there’s going to be about four weeks between now and the next biggish-kinda-deal event—and that fact is in no way unrelated to my thesis.

Bernhard Eisel recently made some comments that the UCI WorldTour—the sport’s top tier of competition—lacks a lot of unifying feautres; things like a leader’s jersey, a centralized media contact, and real, season-long relevance to the WorldTour points standings—for example, using them to determine caravan order.

I’m finally getting back on my feet here. Internet connection and home network are squared away. I’ve found some good roads into and out of town, and finally renewed my USAC license. I’m even done unpacking, though I seem to have misplaced both my (latest) HRM strap and USB mic—this is why I can’t have nice things.

Anyway—the Tour of Luxembourg Skøda Tour. Lance Armstrong finished third overall, and to be fair, that’s pretty impressive, given that his last serious European work was Tour of Flanders—hardly great tune-up for a hilly stage race. Not that the Skøda Tour was particularly hilly, or even particularly stage-y, since bad weather neutralized the GC race on the final stage, but I am trying to avoid eating the hater-tots (above left).

So it’s mid January. I had been, throughout my previous half-decade of running this blog, under the impression that this time of year was the “off season”. But apparently this opinion is not shared by a cabal of very old, very white men in Aigle, Switzerland.

Yes, while all reasonable cyclists are just digging out the trainer/building base Jens Factor-style, a few select sprinters—actually, just Andre Gripel so far—are profiting immensely from the UCI ProTour’s attempt to outflank the owners of the biggest bike races on Earth.

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.

Rule #14 of the Internet—according to one respected count—is to never argue with the trolls. Cycling, being a sport consumed and appreciated largely via the Internet, should be no exception.

So I’m not going to talk about Bernard Kohl, or his recent whining in the press. If he wanted not to manage his weight, he should have taken up soccer. And frankly, a quarter litre of vodka just isn’t that much—I’m not volunteering to consume it, but I wouldn’t say it’s anything out of place for an initiation ritual—especially if a Kazakh named “Vino” is doing the initiating.

A mere 10 days since the Tour and we’ve already had how many races? My count of top-tier post-Tour Euro cycling events is currently at three; one classic and two fairly extensive stage races:

Tour of Denmark (29 July – 2 Aug)
Clasica San Sebastian (1 Aug)
Tour of Poland (2 Aug – 8 Aug)

That’s 13 days of racing within 14 days of the end of the Tour—and frankly, that’s too many races. I realize that cycling’s season is long and grueling; even with recently defunct races like Züri-Metzgete and Deutchland Tour, there are a finite number of racing days in which to hold events.