Seriously, the closest thing I can find to news is word of a Rabobank team car getting stolen. Everyone’s all just rehashing their Simoni teasers, horribly misspelling the names of nearly-were sponsors, or editorializing wildly on the current state of affairs in cycling. That’s not to say there’s nothing good to read. Velochimp makes an elegant arguement for a smaller ProTour and T-Mobile talks about how great a team it is (making excellent use of selective omission), while the NFL appears to have found a team more f-ed up than the boys in pink (strangely enough, the Vikings also sport a somewhat less-manly uniform color). Pez has some, uh, let’s go with “interesting” reports on Lombardy and a small Spanish race that has “escalada” in the title, so I ignored it completely for philosophical reasons. Cyclingnews gives its default 4.5 yellow jersey ranking to yet another $5,000 Italian triumph of style over substance, as VeloNews once again shows its utter disregard for meaningful research by publishing an article on ‘cross brakes so rife with shortcomings I don’t know where to begin:
- Preamble concerning mechanical advantage is confusing and largley irrelevant to article;
- Claim is made that V-brakes reduce mud clearance, which the tight clearance of most ‘cross forks makes irrelevant anyway (especially when you consider which way the front wheel, where most of the braking happens, rotates);
- Non-linear cantis of all varieties squeal horribly; mechanics who say this is merely the result of poor set-up have clearly never heard a World Cup Cyclocross race (listen to one over at Cycling.TV if you don’t believe me);
- No mention is made of BMX mini V-brakes that are compatable with the shorter pull of a traditional road lever;
- Also omitted is any discussion of tandem levers, which are mechanically identical to road levers, but pull enough cable to function with standard mountain brakes;
- Disc brakes, which have overrun the MTB world with their stopping power, modulation, and steady performance in pretty much any weather, are mentioned only in passing, and with no attention paid to the fact that disc models exist that are designed to integrate flawlessly with road levers.
