After the omnipresent specter of doping, cycling’s biggest problem is an obvious shortage of Oligarchical Oversight Organizations Whose Names Readily Form Acronyms. While existing OOOWNRFAs such as the UCI, ASO and WADA, control a few important aspects of professional cycling, the sport still lacks a unified body with ultimate authority over who can race and…
Sebastian, Denmark, Millar
So while I took another weekend off, another exciting Clasica San Sebastian came to a close. This year’s winner? Leonardo Bertagnolli, who, as his Wikipedia page so starkly suggests, isn’t exactly the biggest name in the sport. True, his win completed a nice comeback story, but it’s still another second-tier winner at what should be…
San Sebastian Approaches
The good news is, come the weekend, you can stop pretending to care who wins the Tour of Denmark stage each day. Why? Because San Sebastian is coming up. You know, the one-day race with a lot of climbing and the funny hat? If you still don’t know what I’m talking about, it might be…
Racing, Tabloids, Drugs, Tabloids, Beef
So I’m going to start the day in Denmark, where Matti Breschel became the first Dane to win a stage at the Tour of Denmark in nearly half a decade. No word yet on whether to chalk that winless streak up to bad luck, or an active anti-Danish campaign by embittered Rasmussen teammates. Speaking of…
Timing and Shifting
So I don’t know who to blame. Sackless editors? Lazy writers? Why is it only after the Tour de France, when no one else is paying attention, that the “mainstream sports are dirty too” and “at least cycling tries to be clean” stories come out? Maybe I’m just a cynic, but it seems like the…
Untangling the Tour de France Dope Stories
So the 2007 Tour is finally finished. Time for me to return to this blog’s normal topics of telecommunications billing, with specific emphasis on reports generation, postpaid offline rating, journaling, and – new for August – general ledgers! (Are the new viewers gone yet?). Yes, the ’07 Tour may only be a memory, but the…
Tour de France '07 – And Now We Can Sleep
Yes, after 24 hours of on-and-off 503 errors, I am finally able to make my last post on the 2007 Tour. The finish, despite the cagey “maybe I will, maybe I won’t” attitude of Cadel Evans, and rumors of a mass protest, was a confirmation win for Danielle Bennati. His Lampre team hadn’t been having…
Tour de France '07 – A Hopefully Truthful Race
So that was a pretty good TT. Leipheimer riding like a man possessed, Cadel Evans looking like a wounded beast, and Contador feeding Evans slack the whole way, knowing all along that he had plenty to give. In the end, the Top 3 remained unchanged, but the tight time gaps (:31 between first and third)…
Tour de France '07 – Casar Wins, The Fans' Blind Eye
Say what you will about doping; I think today’s finish was the saddest and most unfair of the entire ’07 Tour. Not that three-time runner up Sandy Casar was an undeserving winner – he bounced back from an early spill, made his turns in the break, and played his speed edge perfectly in the finale….
Tour de France '07 – The Morning After
So finally, the Chicken has been plucked. But when one asks “Why now? Why not ten days ago?”, that’s when the feathers really fly. Rabobank Manager Theo DeRooy says that the Dane claimed to have been training in Mexico all through June. But yesterday, DeRooy heard from an Italian Journalist that Rasmussen was in Italy…