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…
They Say The Season Starts This Week
Unless the spike in high-priority, all-caps emails on “LANCE ARMSRTONG’S FINAL RACE OUTSIDE THE US” have mislead me, a bunch of clowns in Switzerland who haven’t shoveled my driveway four times in the past two weeks seem to think the season is getting underway again. Then again, I should count myself lucky that over-zealous and…
The UCI is UC-Less
UPDATE 10 Feb 2015: the UCI—or more likely, their low-bid legal agents—have taken down the “UCI-Less” bumper sticker from Zazzle. Strangely, they seem not have have found the t-shirt. Can’t complain about that. Ah, the UCI. Perhaps no governing body is held dear in the hearts of those it lords over, but is any so…
Forget Doping—Cycling's Media Problems Are Worse
It’s strange, really—crafting a race strategy and timing that perfect attack doesn’t seem so different from devising a policy for dealing with the media and scheduling your tidbits to the press for maximum impact. And yet, cyclists and those involved in cycling seem to have a near-bottomless penchant for screwing it up. Take Floyd Landis…
Top Tube Pads: The Future of CX?
Chris Horner has never been an adherent to cyclocross orthodoxy. From top-mount levers, to paired-spoke wheels, to a whole lot of other things, Horner has always marched to the beat of his own drummer when racing on the dirt. But at Friday’s Jingle Cross in Iowa City, Horner debuted another CX innovation: (original image from…
The Pistolero Steakhouse T-Shirt
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of Norwegians telling me what to think. Take Thor Hushovd getting his knickers in a twist because of the local support Alberto Contador has received since his positive dope test. Just because most of his fans are too busy being employed to flood into the streets is…
Poor Communication On Either Side Of The Atlantic
Communication is highly underrated. Take my recent dust-up with The Atlantic over a deleted comment on their not-initially-so-accurate history of blood doping. With no direct contact emails for authors and editors, a reluctance to respond to @replies or Tumblr inquiries, and a Memory Hole-esque contact form as the only institutional recourse, that magazine makes it…