Yes! It’s bike season again! Here’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, half of the Belgian season’s opening weekend, run in some unseasonably nice weather over various cobbles and bergs, and featuring an inordinately large number of mechanical problems.

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

Contains a photo from Jeff Jones’ Cyclingnews days, and footage from Sporza.be.

Be sure to check out the rest of the videos, either here, the iTunes store, on Vimeo or on YouTube. I’ve also got footage from today’s KBK event, which should be making an appearance later in the week.

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While I could do without the music, and the grainy VHS-to-flash video quality, this Team 7-Eleven classic is definitely worth watch. It’s not often a 10-day stage race comes down to an intermediate sprint…



(via velogogo)

You’ve got to wonder at the behind-the-scenes machinations preceding this final stage. It strains credulity that Panasonic, after 10 days of racing, and shattering the field up the final climb the day before, could have controlled the entire peloton with their legs alone, before putting an all-rounder like Winnen in prime position to win the sprint.

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Remember way back in May, when the Giro super-criterium in Milan was neutralized? Well, here’s Lance Armstrong’s take:

(from this long feature at NOS, via RoadID, RT’d by Versus producer @joelfelicio)

Check out Armstrong’s reactions: forcing Mart Smeets to come out and declare him the Captain of the Peloton, rather than saying it himself. Casting the other heads of state as bickering “little bosses”, and even painting race officials as ineffectually timid. One senses the implication that, without Armstrong, the pro peloton would still be squabbling on the cobblestones of Milan’s old city.

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Found this in my Tumblr feed this morning, courtesy of VeloGogo (which, as an aside, would have been a far better candidate for Blog of the Year if Competitive Cyclist actually gave a rip about the criteria it claimed to advance):

My only objection stems from the picture caption, which labels these videos as the “Old Testament”. In the Cycling Church of Cosmo, the dates and titles on those VHS collections (especially “The Greatest Climbs of the Tour de France 1990-1999″) would place them squarely in the center of the Apocrypha.

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This might be old news, but it’s the best video footage I’ve seen of the legendary Gavia stage at the ‘88 Giro. There isn’t all that much snow porn in this clip (certainly not compared to the famous poster), but the surprising video quality, actual racing coverage, and pure human carnage (semi-conscious Bob Roll at 6:45) are fantastic.

(via All Hail The Black Market; see also: inferior Gavia footage.)

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So now that the domestic ‘cross season has (more or less) wrapped up, it’s time to reflect. Did things not go as well as you’d planned? Did the big investment in equipment and training still not pay off on the results sheet?

We at Cyclocosm think that, next season, you could benefit from a better approach:

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

There’s also a version on YouTube and a more-or-less complete list of source material.

And we also have t-shirts and a variety of other Cyclocross Essentials merchandise.

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Can radios be ruining cycling if the *real* Sprinters’ Classic goes to a rouleur for the second straight year? QuickStep shoulders the chasing load, while in the break, a Skil-Shimano rider sees too much soft-pedaling and makes the leap for freedom. But it’s all together with 8k to go as a very unlikely group threatens to force the selection.

[right-click for iTunes compatible download]

Also available on YouTube.

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An aging champion struggles to regain his form. A brash rookie refuses to conform to the ways of the peloton. Together, they can overcome the forces arrayed against them—but only if they first conquer the demons within. The Bodyguard is the timeless tale of a bond forged between two men in the quest for victory in professional cycling.

[right-click for iTunes-compatible download]

My homage to The Empire Brokeback, made entirely of footage from Cervelo’s excellent Beyond The Peloton documentary series. The not-exactly-memorable trailer to The Bodyguard (1992) is here for comparison.

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I’m not a big cyclocross guy, but there was apparently a touch of wheels that caused some excitement heading into the sand on Day 2 of Gloucester this year. Colt McElwaine was in the right place at the right time and got the original, better quality video—I just added slow-mo.
NOTE: contains pottymouth.

From Velonews:

“There’s almost a foot-deep trough in the sand,” Johnson said. “I got in there first and I didn’t see what happened to (Page).”

Page had a different take. “Johnson took my front wheel out,” he told VeloNews before the podium ceremony.

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It hasn’t been the greatest evening/morning for me. Last night, I spent about 4 hours standing upright on very slow, very crowded trains, got home late, found that @UniversalSports is unfamiliar with the concept of fair use, and on top of all that, had to get up early and find a new spot for Third Tuesday.

Fortunately I found this video on Velogogo to put all that awful in perspective:

The soundtrack, and the money shot of Bob Roll Leonard Nitz removing his hairnet helmet around 1:20, really take it to another level for me.

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