There’s an easy way to make a million people agree with you—present an argument that’s both simple and entirely compatible with their existing values. An example: A man is suspected of burglary. He has left fingerprints near, but not at, a number of crime scenes, 11 friends are willing to testify against him, but the…
The New Reality
For better or worse, the racing in this year’s Tour de France did not offer a great deal of excitement. There were some interesting sprints, the positive (mad watts) and negative (position, timing) confirmations of Peter Sagan’s abilities, the emergence of Tejay VanGarderen as a guy who can hold a GC place for three weeks,…
Every Bonus Second Counts
We’re nearly a week into the Tour de France, and yet the race’s most obvious prize remains awarded based on a handful of seconds’ from the event’s first seven minutes. Is this any way to encourage quality racing on the sport’s biggest stage? I understand the arguments against bonus seconds—the best example is probably Levi…
My Friend Ernest
It hasn’t been the best month-and-a-half here at Cyclocosm. More accurately, you might say it hasn’t been the best month and a half for your humble narrator personally, but open-ended complaints make for poor reading. So let me just say that it was a very nice break from the recent routine to see my friend,…
The Amgen Tour of Confused Californian Branding
The Tour of California has an image problem. Mercifully, it’s nothing to with jersey zips—it’s more that the race’s marketing material is absolutely incomprehensible. Let’s overlook the fact that “Eight Days of Epic” uses the most cored marketing term in recent memory (it’s been a joke on Archer for crying out loud)—the Tour of California…
The Vanishing GC Sprinter
Brad Wiggins’ performance earlier this week in the first stage of the Tour of Romandie was a rare treat for the modern cycling fan: a real Grand Tour contender duking it and taking the win in a bunch sprint. It wasn’t in a Grand Tour, of course, and it took a couple pretty serious climbs…
How to Succeed in Bike Racing Without Really Trying
In 2005, Tom Boonen’s ascendancy was nothing short of meteoric, and his failure to maintain that level of success since has prompted no shortage of discussion. While I was one of the first to suggest that the Belgian might just be the first of a new generation rather than the next Merckx, I’ve also been…
How the Race was Ripped-Off
I think I may have surprised some people by not flying into an Internet rage yesterday when VeloNews launched a familiar-looking video feature with a not entirely unique name. My magnanimous response not withstanding, I should clarify that I’m not psyched about the development. Indeed, there was a time when I would have let fly…
Sanremo, Strength, and Tactics
For a guy who made obsessing over aerodynamics and other tech geek foibles into the development and marketing norm in the sport, Gerard Vroomen is surprisingly attuned to the sloppy, cut-and-run realities of professional bike racing. After some muttering from fans following Sanremo, and some atypically direct criticism of RadioShack by Philippe Gilbert, Vroomen put…
Why I Love the Spring
I don’t hide that fact that I think the spring classics are the best bike racing the season has to offer. Sure, in terms of complexity, drama and sheer scale they can’t match the sweeping scope of the Grand Tours, but then again, how many people do you find who hold up Moby Dick as…