Month: January 2006

Well, yet another Tour Down Under is in the books, and for the first time ever, one rider (Simon Gerrans of Ag2r) has held the coveted orange jersey throughout the entirity of the race. Of course, we were pretty sure this was gonna happen yesterday, as the young Australian would have been hard pressed to…

How about those Aussies? Sure, it’s mid-season in the Land Down Under while the Euros are still shaking the rust off their chains, but going into today’s stage, the GC leader was Australian, along with three of the four (or two of the three, depending on if you count the “prelude”) stage winners. And then…

Sorry to miss posting yesterday, but the cell towers in this particular region of New Hampshire seem not to like carrying data calls. What’d I miss? Not much, it turns out, just Allan Davis taking his first TDU stage win after eight years of racing the dang thing. With the GC largely unchanged, some commentators…

Yes! real racing! None of the this “prelude” crap (with all the yacking Bob Roll’s been doing about his historic crash in ’88, you think they’d have stopped doing this sort of thing by now…), but a full-on, nasty-breakaway, blow-the-race-apart stage one. Dang, my expectations were more than fulfilled. Anyone finishing 20th or worse today…

It looks to be another banner year for lens-grinders. My brief jubilation that Quick.Step had darkened their ’06 team kit was crushed today when I realized that Liberty Seguros has done the exact same thing. And I mean exact, right down to the white patches on the shoulder. So get those new perscription glasses now,…

Today was the big day for Team T-Mobile, their first presentation in 13 years without Erik Zabel. The squad made up for it by simultaneously presenting their women’s team, perhaps the most groundbreaking of the massive changes in store for the outfit in ’06. Of the 29 men’s riders, 12 are new, though the first…

I just lost my whole post. I am quite upset about this. So here is a quick one-paragraph rundown of what I was going to say. Ullrich: fat but still trying for Tour. Botero: dark horse. Presentations: Ceramica and Bouygues. Team kit colors: green is the new blue. Dick Pound: not swayed by riders’ union…

January is the season of the pointless, where news is scarce, and inane but unaviodable questions inevitably arise. Questions like “isn’t Phil Ligget too old to wear shorts? Isn’t Tom Boonen a little rich to have such a crappy haircut? Why is Paolo Bettini trying to win Tour of Flanders? Why is the Rider’s Union…

First order of business: anonymous commenters, you are now breaking the law so long as I find your posts annoying. You have been warned. Second order of business: bad day for dopers. Danilo Hondo, appealing to the CAS to have his one-year dope ban from earlier this season struck down, instead had it lengthened to…

What’s the deal? Why are we quibbling about tats on local hero ‘cross racers? Is this not a pro cycling blog, with the “pro” part carrying a heavy implication of European as well? Onward, then, to across the pond. Surely there must be news by now? Yes! And it’s all team-related. CSC comes through with…