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…
Tag: Analysis
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…
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…
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…
Contador, Criteriums, and Clenbuterol
Let’s see…suspended rider to participate in unsanctioned criterium. Why does that sound familiar? Ah yes—the Tyler Hamilton case. I wish I could tell you more about it, but the massive number of dead links from this otherwise excellent summary article is clouding my memory. Am I the only cycling site on the Internet that knows…
How The Race Was Won – Paris-Tours 2010
Anyone else out there tired of talking about doping? How about taking a look at a few races contested by the type of rider who apparently never needs to dope? I’ve been out of town for the past two weeks, but am finally catching up on the late-season classics, and so (turning a blind eye…
Why Cycling Really Is Making Progress
David Walsh, author of the infamous LA Confidentiel and one of the most notable contemporary voices against doping, was quoted in Cyclingnews a few days ago, commenting on the high-profile positives of the past month. “You’ve now got Contador and Mosquera both in trouble” sighed the Irishman, “and you have to think that this sport…
Maybe We Should Test For Accountability
What is it about this sport that cultivates such an aversion to accountability? It must be drafting or something. Let’s start with the UCI, who flatly denied a Contador positive to ARD after they were aware of it, and before the story broke. Ignore the fact that most third-graders know to spit back “neither-confirm-nor-deny” boilerplate…
The New Professional Team Model
I wrote (before my little break) about two investment approaches taken by various teams: a willingness to develop riders, and settle for good-not-great results in the process, versus full-on pressure to glean the best possible results immediately. I argued—using the example of Bernhard Kohl and the 2008 TdF—that while the first method may seem inferior,…