Cyclocosm

Yeah. The problem with updating at 11:16pm EDT is that the next morning at 10, the news is all the same as it was during the last post, because Massachusetts’ last night is still Europe’s this morning. Dang. Ah well. This’ll be a domestic news post, then: Mike Creed and Danny Pate have signed to…

Ugh. No news all week, and then BAM – Giro presentation, reactions and like a bajillion interesting side-stories all on the day I have to get up at 5am to go volunteer at a cyclocross race. So yeah, top story: Giro 2006 has lots of hills and a split stage (they apparently need additional approval…

Finally! Here’s the official site, and, to save you the trouble of hacking around the Italian web page, here’s Cyclingnews’ and Daily Peloton’s reports, plus a map from Pez. The story is no change in course, depsite threats of boycotts from non-Italian teams.

Seriously. I know, both from comments on yesterday’s post and recent forum postings that at some point today, the ’06 Giro route was officially available. But it has since been take down. Cyclingnews, VeloNews, Daily Peloton, they’ve all got nothing on it. It’s still only 4 pm in Milan, so concievably, the presentation may not…

It’s in all the papers today: rumors of a split stage to end the ’06 Giro d’Italia. Split stages have been a bit of a bugaboo for the peloton in the past. The stage (or stages, depending on how you look at it) would consist of an uphill timetrial in the AM and the final…

It’s barely mid-November, and already Jan Ullrich is getting it in gear, gaming up for what could be his most difficult Tour de France to lose since, like, 1998. Good for him. Chances are, the big German won’t have to worry about George Hincapie; he’s been selected as a “protected rider,” which has been an…

Yes, kiddies, today’s lesson is on the three R’s of off-season cycling journalism. First step is Reduce: Check out Cycloblog; maybe four, five posts in the past month? And TDFBlog hasn’t posted since, what, like August? Even Cyclingnews has to cut down from its three-news-posts-a-day peak. Of course, you’ll see no post frequency reduction here….

So, in case you missed it, the big news is Roberto Heras has tested positive for EPO. Coverage has been pretty wide-spread so far. While Heras has maintained his innocence and blamed a lab mix-up for the positive, the news couldn’t have come at a worse time for his team. The positive sample, from Stage…

Or more accurately, “non-negative”, though if it’s not negative, there’s really only one thing it could be. According to Cyclingnews, the non-negative A sample came from Stage 20, in which Heras rode a blistering TT, coming in second and expanding his lead over Denis Menchov. He could, of course, still be exonerated by a clean…