‘Alo. Je m’appelle Jacques-Yves Cosmo, and today I will be your guide as we travel today to zee Depths of Inanity, in zee heart of zee European cycling world. As there has been much hot air introduced into zis closed system, we must wear our pressure suits, for we have not zee thick skulls of zee beasts that inhabit zis place. Ah! Regard, our first specimen, UCIous hypocriticus, known more commonly as “Pat McQuaid.” Zis fine animal is newly evolved, having recently supplanted UCIous crusty-old-Belgicus, and is facing zee fierce competition from Grandtourus tyrannicus, long a competitor for zis tiny niche. Hypocriticus maintains in zis article that tyrannicus is motivated by greed, even while hypocriticus refuses to compensate teams zat race its events. Tyrannicus, meanwhile, apparently zinks zat because its races are very old and important, it, not hypocriticus, should decide which teams race in zem. C’est vrai, it is a truly vicious battle, with almost no impact on zee actual racing of bikes; thus, it is fought exclusively in zee Depths of Inanity.
Does the name Dmitri Konyshev ring a bell to you? Fans of the Crash! DVD will recall Allan Pieper specifically selects Konyshev (complete w/vodka) as his partner-in-crime for post-Tour reverie, and should also know that Konyshev took the stage win on the Champs-Elysees back in ’91, when Djamolidin Abdoujapourov ran into a giant promotional Coke can and had to be carried across the line (with a concussion and broken collarbone) to claim his Green Jersey. You may have noticed I said “back in ’91?” Well, he’s still racing (scroll down), even after the departure of his former Soviet homeboy Pavel Tonkov. Konyshev is probably in some weird old-school Russian stand-off with Viatcheslav Ekimov, to see who’s the last of the old Soviet regime to quit.
This is entirely unrelated to anything, but apparently this fork is the greatest fork in the world. Because of all that Swiss precision, yeah? Except that at least some of Oval’s parts are made by Kestrel, an American company, which rumor has it has all it’s parts made by Martek in Taiwan. Good thing the reviewer put some research into that. He must have just been sidetracked by all these bold face terms. Fortunately, Daily Peloton did remember to look up some paragraph-length descriptions (scroll down) for each of the US ‘Cross Nats sponsors. That’s 288 words for sponsors out of a total 867 in the whole article; great work, guys!