Well, it ain’t the Tour de France, but as per my prediction, Sylvain Chavanel certianly is on a tear. While Dwaars door Vlaanderen has turned out its fair share of oddball winners (Frederik Veuchelen, anyone?) Brabantse Pijl has been the personal property of thrice-over world champ Oscar Freire for quite some time. We’ll see the…
News Archive
I really shouldn’t need to spell this one out for you
2008 Milan-Sanremo
In response to Velonews’ pre-race question “sprint or break”, the answer is “no”. Drawing obvious comparisons to last year’s staggering TdF stage win at Compeigne, Fabian Cancellara once again turned savvy, raw power and a confusing race situation into a glorious breakaway win. While TT riders can be notoriously poor performers in tense, tactical race…
At Long Last: Het Volk & KBK 2008!
Ah, finally, good cause to ignore all the piddly little races that have filled up the cycling calendar so far. Not that I haven’t ignored them up to this point, of course, but now I have an excuse… In 2006, Phillippe Gilbert broke out onto the international cycling scene by taking his first Het Volk….
Another Week, Another French Win.
Right…so I took on a third job last week. Questionable judgment on my part, I know, but it appears to be a short-term kinda thing. At any rate, some of my predictions in last week’s post have already begun to come true. Astana – not invited to the ’08 Tour. No Kloeden, no Levi, no…
2008: The Year of the French
Het Volk isn’t until March 1st this year, but it’s never too soon to start dredging the murky channels of cycling to see what fetid gunk comes up. First sloppy bucketload – some guy whose name I can’t pronounce won a race I can’t pronounce. This sort of thing would normally make me feel like…
Sheldon Brown, R.I.P., RCS Still Alive, Qatar
It was a rough Sunday out here in New England. First was the Pats loss, and then came word of Sheldon Brown’s passing. It’s not so much that without Sheldon’s site I wouldn’t be writing this; it’s that I wouldn’t be on a bike. At all. Riding a bicycle, especially an entry-level machine, causes stuff…
WTF UCI? TDU ProTour? LMAO.
Jeezum H. Crow…I feel like a bear forced out of estuvation by an early spring. I’m all for globalization of the sport, but WTF? January? I mean, this sh!t doesn’t even make sense – another stage today, but none yesterday? The two races are part of the same event, and yet unrelated? I refuse to…
A Trip to Lake Wobegon
So that last post extinguished my urge to talk about baseball for the next decade or so, but I still feel obligated to note that, after a mere three days, baseball already has its own David Millar and Tyler Hamilton. Clemens might do well to note that had Tyler just come clean back in ’04,…
Why Baseball Looks (and may soon be) Cleaner Than Cycling
Forget the weak dollar, foreign wars, and the past two presidential elections – America is still the greatest country in the world. You know why? The Mitchell Report [PDF; short version here]. No tabloid B.S., no codenames, no rumor, and no innuendo. Just the facts: a man on the inside, receipts, confessions, testimony and positive…
Ullrich Season Continues, DiLuca Denies Non-Illegal Act, WADA Media Committee?
Does Germany have its own version of Rupert Murdock? If so, does anyone else get the feeling that Jan Ullrich must have been porking his wife? I realize my only exposure to the German press is through cycling, but every frickin’ day it’s another thing with these people. Today’s screed – Ullrich and Fuentes were…