San Remo Fever: catch it! The final round of previews is up: Velochimp gives the nod to Igor Astarloa as a dark horse pick if the group sprint doesn’t come together. He also suggests that Gazzetta dello Sport‘s recent award to race favorite Tom Boonen may have been a sneaky attempt to wear the Belgian…
SRAM Lies in Press Release, More San-Remo Previews
Lemme just hold off on the continuing torrent of San Remo news to rip apart SRAM’s BS Sea Otter Press Release. Scroll down past “SRAM Force in 3-D” and you’ll discover the following passage: “So far only members of the Kodakgallery.com-Sierra Nevada and Orbea pro road teams have sampled SRAM’s Force road group but that’s…
Milan-San Remo Previews, Other Bits of News
So it occurred to me this morning, as sheets of snow and driving wind swirled about my window, that it’s only Wednesday, and that I still might get some racing in this weekend. This came as something of a surprise, for the way the cycling media’s gone MSR craaazy, you’d think it was the night…
T-A Wrap-Up, Milan-San Remo Rundown
Hard to pinpoint the top story of today; guess I’ll start with the racing, which was the final stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, in which Alessandro Petacchi, with a little help from 4 (and almost 5)-time winner Erik Zabel, fired the final shot in the pre-San Remo skirmishes. Tom Boonen, the bookmaker’s choice for la Primavera, has…
Paris-Nice Wrap-Up, T-A Weekend Update, News
Why does all the interesting stuff happen on the weekends? Ah well. Let’s begin with Paris-Nice where absolutely nothing happened, and save the interesting stuff for later. Floyd Landis went on to win the race pretty much uncontested; ok, yeah, a few breakaways won stages, a French director sportif pretty much said “No, I don’t…
Bethel Spring Series – Ronde de Bethel – Report
Sex or Bike Racing? It’s the eternal question. Among my race-obsessed friends, the preference is generally whichever they’ve had least recently. So, it being some 6.5 months since my last road race, it seems like a three-hour trip to Bethel would be a no-brainer. But given my history, you never really know, do you? In…
Boonen, Bettini Beat Davis, Zabel; New Shimano, SRAM
Call it the Erik Zabel Kiss of Death. Allan Davis took second at Paris-Nice for the third time in four stages, once again to reigning World Champ Tom Boonen. Davis has racked up more than his fair share of minor placings over the past two seasons, and I attribute it to this interview, in which…
Bettini Starts Strong at T-A, Landis Leads at P-N
Yeah, now this is what pro cycling needs, a little T & A. I mean, Daily Distractions is one thing, but a whole race dedicated to…oh. It’s just Tirreno-Adriatico. Ah well, at least the stage was interesting, with Quick.Step’s Paolo Bettini (who most definitely did not “defer” to Petacchi at last year’s Worlds) taking the…
Big Words At Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico Line-Ups
“Malediction”? Dang, y’all; give Cyclingnews’ man in France bonus points for sending me to the dictionary in his Stage 2 Paris-Nice report. I knew what it meant, but believed it applied strictly to curses in the form of incantations. I wouldn’t use it as he did, but the judges gave it the thumbs up, and…
Paris-Nice, Milan-Turin, ProTour Debate Goes On
Man, I gotta stop taking these weekend junkets around New England; it’s cutting down on productivity. It is, also, however, streamlining my posts dramatically. For example, I have to cut right to the chase that Tom Boonen used his sprint win in Stage 2 of Paris-Nice to wrest the GC lead from defending champ Bobby…