Rain in Spain, Decent Weather at the Other Two-Bajillion Concurrently Running Top-Level Bicycle Racing Events

The pre-Worlds exodus has begun, and, it would appear, not a day too soon. Continuing its atrocious photo coverage of this year’s Vuelta, Cyclingnews has no photospread of watery carnage; it does, however, have some heinously under-edited picture captions. Where’s that press release, again? The one where CN says the sale to Future will have no effect on quality?

Anyway, the stage win was a nice, and unfortunately, rare win for Klier; a good contrast to the carbon copy the Milram Express cranked out yesterday. And as George Hincapie retained his lead at the Missouri Tour that very same day, and diaries, even barely-topical ones, continued to propagate unabated, there really wasn’t much else to write about.

Psych! I knew I get you on that one – people always seem to think September is the start of ‘cross season, so the UCI jam-packs the month with road races to combat this misconception. Seriously – I mean, I don’t even report on the FutureTour. If you lived in England, you know that when a stage is renamed for a cancer victim it’s big news; non-memorial results are comparatively unimportant.

If you’re in Poland, you realize that nothing important has happened there in a quarter-century, and thus get excited over routine wins from Pippo Pozzato. And if you’re in Brazil, you’re excited because, between yesterday’s win and today’s yellow jersey, Murilo Fischer appears to be getting on form just in time for Worlds.