It’s a complicated thing to be a sprinter in this sport. Riders without that taste for risk and a talent for velocity, especially at the lower levels of the sport, seem perpetually envious of the speed merchants. But a strong finishing kick is not the blessing that it seems. There are many factors that play…
Author: cosmo
Seven Years After Pantani
“I always said that doping was generalized and you could say even democratic up to the time when they developed a test for EPO, then it became elitist. You needed cutting-edge methods to get around the tests from that point on—methods that often only the big riders and teams could access or afford. —Filippo Simeoni…
The Real Pre-Season Begins
Tom Boonen, Heinrich Haussler, Tyler Farrar—all names you’ve heard of before. And all names you’ve seen taking wins at the bevy of tune-up races filling space underneath this week’s doping headlines. Even the Etoile Besseges—the second peloton’s tune-up race—you’ll catch a glimpse of a few names who’ve stolen a Tour stage, or at least featured…
Raw Documents – The Verbruggen/Landis Exchange
When Paul Kimmage released the full transcript of his interview with Floyd Landis earlier this week, it didn’t take a PR expert to predict what the UCI’s response would be. Pat McQuaid flatly denied all allegations made in the interview, claimed that “there has never been corruption in the UCI”, and went on to take…
Ball's in Your Court, McQuaid
NY Velocity has published a tremendous, unedited, transcript of Paul Kimmage’s interview with Floyd Landis. There’s a ton of information in there—stuff from Floyd accusing Oscar Pereiro of calling the kettle black to more details on that whole “blood down the drain” story—but what really struck me was this exchange: Kimmage: How many of the…
2011: A Record Year for Drama?
Did I not mention a little something about there being plenty of room for forthcoming drama at the head of my last post? Good gravy, it’s been a busy week—and it’s only Thursday. Leadoff: Alberto Contador gets a one-year suspension from the Spanish Federation, or RFEC for those of us who don’t like typing. The…
Tour Down Undermining
Going to a take a bit of a break from the drama and talk about the TdU today. After all, there’s going to be about four weeks between now and the next biggish-kinda-deal event—and that fact is in no way unrelated to my thesis. Bernhard Eisel recently made some comments that the UCI WorldTour—the sport’s…
Floyd Landis Never Was A Master Of Timing
Whatever else you might think of Floyd Landis, you’ve gotta give him this—the dude does not hedge. In 2006, he was totally and completely innocent—a clean rider from a pair of clean teams, mistakenly charged. “Positively False” was his now-smirkingly-appropriate campaign mantra. Then last year, his confessed his unequivocal guilt, and went on to catalogue…
Shattering the Media Complacency
Ah—what a day. Floyd Landis retires, and immediately thereafter, a boatload of not-entirely-unfamiliar looking allegations against Lance Armstrong drop. Looks like the real sporting press scooped their cycling-specific counterparts once again on today’s headlines (with one exception), but at least we’ve got BikeRadar, hard at work bringing us “Profile: Ben Coates“. My journo slang’s a…
Factcheck: Adam Blythe
It’s no secret that Philippe Gilbert can shred—especially when road heads downhill. In 2009, he and then-teammate Cadel Evans put on a fantastic display of recklessness attempting a late-race escape at the Tour of Romandie. So no surprise here that he hit 74 miles an hour tearing down a training camp descent on the bumper…