Thank you to everyone responsible for adding clicks to the counter while my brain has been on sabbatical. New material is on the way, including “Remembrance of Ass-Kickings Past” (1999 Long Island SuperCup: Bobke Strut lines up against ‘cross uber-man Daniele Pontoni, find out what a former world champion says to pack-filler when their sorry asses get lapped after a mere 40 minutes), James “Babe” Cromwell’s late 1970s, pre-famous-actor, SoCal cycling career, a “where are they now” treatment of the rider roster from my first nationals experience (San Diego, 1983), and a photo-essay of what happens to nice bikes (one owned by a future Navigators pro) when they get run over by a very fast, very oblivious 18-wheeler on the outskirts of Chicago. Damn that was funny.

For one day out of the year can you succeed in keeping your fossil fuel emissions to an absolute minimum (preferably zero)? Leave the car in the driveway and use any combination of walking, cycling, or public transportation for your day’s travels. Burn some extra calories and maybe, if the message is headed in ample numbers, the air will be cleaner and the roads more pedestrian/cyclist friendly for a change. If you happen to be a cyclist in Durham I hope you’ll attend Duke’s “Pedaling for a Safe Commute” Ride beginning at 12 noon on East Campus. I’ll be out there on my fine MB-4 beater singlespeed, the only one sporting an expansive EVILDOER sticker on the downtube.

World Doping Free Peloton Day

Et tu, Tyler? I know, I know, innocent until proven guilty, but the initial evidence surely seems ominous.
Maybe the UCI should institute an amnesty day like your local library does so scofflaws can come clean with their 12 year old, overdue books. Everyone who’s juiced up on god knows what can publicly clean out their cache of pharmaceuticals and maybe restore some shred of integrity to our sport.

I couldn’t help but furrow my brow in bemusement at the jacket Andrea Tafi was sporting last weekend in San Francisco. No longer will Euro-pros walk American streets in anonymity:

I wish Andrea would turn around so you could read the back:

Hello, My name is Andrea. I’m very famous in Europe.

Ask me about my palmares which get no American press:

Paris-Roubaix?…Won it
Ronde van Vlaanderen?…Won it
Giro di Lombardia?…Won it
Paris-Tours?…Won it
Italian National Championship?…Won it

No, Lance wasn’t there but I would have kicked his ass too.

Yes, all Italian pros sport impeccably coiffed, frosted hair.

I’m available for photographs. Impress your friends!

No, I don’t know where Lance Armstrong is.

The Fred Spencer, Jr. ad dates back to 1928 and appeared in an unknown newspaper. I bought the ad off of ebay and it’s cropped sufficiently to remove any identifying characteristics. And what’s up with that stylin’ robe? Cycling fashion has certainly gone through some changes since the 1920s.

The two Camel ads were scanned from 1935 editions of Fortune magazine. The ad with Bobby Walthour, Jr. is from the June issue and the ad featuring speed skater Jack Shea is from the March issue. If you ever get the chance to read the March, 1935 issue of Fortune I’d highly recommend it. I have the good fortune of living near world-class academic research libraries which happen to have the issues bound in the stacks. There’s a feature article about 6-day racing focusing on the financial aspects of hosting 6-day events in Madison Square Garden. The reporting is pretty detailed and it’s interesting to read about cycling from the economic viewpoint, an issue which rarely, if ever, gets attention in current cycling journalism. While the article is informative, the accompanying visual elements are even better: numerous photos and color illustrations depicting 6-day racing in the Garden. The reclining cyclist in my banner has been shamelessly lifted from that particular article…

Max Sciandri grew tired of being left off the squadra azzuro year after year and excercised his dual citizenship to compete in the world championships for Great Britain, and in a similar vein Guido Trenti took out a USPRO license and has competed wearing stars and stripes in several elite road world chamionships. Davide Rebellin may have a beef as legitimate as Sciandri’s and Trenti’s, but opting to change citizenship approximately 1 month before the Verona world championships to a country that he has absolutely no connection (other than being a friend of an Italian ex-pat highly situated in the Argentinean cycling federation) raises my sporting hackles.

What is perhaps most disturbing is the fact that nobody has explained if Rebellin is denying the opportunity of a lifelong Argentinean citizen (perhaps someone such as Alejandro-Alberto Borrajo who’s shown some form in the recent Tour of Britain) to take part in the world championships. According to the UCI, Argentina is only entitled to put 1 man on the start line due to it’s country’s ranking (38th). Can you imagine this conversation, “Ummm…sorry Alejandro. We know you’ve had a good season and have been building fitness for the worlds but, ummm, Rebellin is faster than you and will start in your place in Verona.” Argentina hasn’t had a strong history of competing in the elite road worlds (I could only find one Argentinean taking part in a world title road race in the past 5 years), so I hope Rebellin isn’t screwing someone. Is this the beginning of the Enron-ization of the peloton? Off-shore citizenship? Will Rebellin operate out of a mailbox in Buenos Aires?

What’s also strange is that Rebellin will have no teammates. None. And I don’t think he can count on any favors from Italy. What can he really hope to accomplish by competing on his own? This is really a lose-lose situation for Rebellin. Imagine these scenarios:

1. Italy, Spain, and Germany self-destruct while Rebellin rides out of his skin and takes home the world title. The tifosi would absolutely shit themselves. How could Rebellin stand tall in Verona, in his native Italy, while the Argentinean national anthem plays (has Rebellin even heard the national anthem?) and live to tell the tale? He would be ripped limb from limb by rabid Italian fans and his still-steaming entrails (along with his rainbow jersey and gold medal) would be Fed-Exed overnight to his new home: a Buenos Aires mailbox.

2. Bettini and Rebellin are in a two-up break and start to play cat and mouse in the closing kilometers. Meanwhile, someone with screaming late-season form, like Alejandro Valverde, motors up to the break in the last minute of the race and dusts them both. Judas Rebellin screws favorite son Paolo Bettini out of an Olympics/Worlds double. Queue the outcome from result #1: Rebellin would be ripped limb from limb by rabid Italian fans and his still-steaming entrails would be Fed-Exed overnight to his new home: a Buenos Aires mailbox.

3. Rebellin isn’t a factor and simply gets to ride 265 km in Verona, showered with spit and venom from rabid tifosi.

What a great idea, Davide.

Here’s a first-hand account of what went down in Manhattan on Friday night during the monthly Time’s Up Critical Mass ride. So much for peaceful public assembly and dissent.

This ad titled “How It Feels to Win a Six-Day Bike Race”, featuring professional cyclist Cecil Yates, was published by R.J. Reynolds in 1940. I’ve simply digitized the comic sequence (the best part of the ad) and left off the additional text and graphics since the entire ad is pretty big and exceeded the space available on my scanner. While the air inside a six-day venue such as Madison Square Garden was probably so toxic with cigarette smoke already that actually flaming up on your own wouldn’t matter, it always cracks me up to see athletes pushing cancer sticks. I wonder if R.J. Reynold’s scientists already knew in 1940 the powerful addictive qualities of cigarettes as well as the havoc cigarettes inflicted on one’s lungs.

And in case you’re wondering who Cecil Yates was, here’s some biographical info:

Cecil Yates was an Irish-American six-day racer who lived on the south side of Chicago. He was born in Thurber, TX (just outside of Dallas) on May 18, 1913 1912 [Date corrected by Cecil Yates’ daughter. The 1913 date came from a 6-day program bio]. He went to Chicago as a youngster and soon entered amateur competition, where he won the junior city and state championships. Yates turned professional in 1932. Perhaps his finest victory occurred in the 1939 six-day race in New York’s Madison Square Garden, riding with Cesare Moretti as his partner. This team showed their superiority by gaining two laps in the last hour to win by one lap over one of the strongest fields of riders ever assembled for a New York race. In Yates’ prime, he was regarded as one of the fastest sprinters in the world.

Yates served 34 months with the Army Air Force during WWII. Yates continued competing throughout the 1940s, won a national title in 1948, and retired from racing in 1950 having won 19 six-day races out of 81 he competed in. In addition to his spate of victories, Yates also finished on the podium in 26 other six-day races with ten 2nd place and sixteen 3rd place results.

Yates was also interested in other sports. He played football for Fenger High School in Chicago, and later played semi-pro football. He also participated in auto-racing, and drove cars on the Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles.

Bradley Wiggins’ pursuit is 4km while Sarah Ulmer’s is 3km.

Chris Hoy raced 1km for his gold medal while Anna Meares raced 500 meters.

The men’s points race encompasses 40km while the women race for 25km.

The men have additional exclusive events such as the keirin(interestingly, the women have a keirin in the world championships but not in the Olympics), team pursuit, madison, and team sprint.

Are the IOC and the UCI flaunting their inner troglodyte? Track and field certainly seems more progressive with virtually equal events and distances for men and women (although not without some quirky exceptions: men’s high hurdles is 110m while women run 100m, women don’t have a steeplechase, men have a decathlon and women have a heptathlon, the women don’t have a 50km race walk). Swimming has virtually equal events and distances (with the exception of the endurance freestyle which has the men swim 1500m while the women swim 800m). The triathlon has equal distances for men and women. Rowing has equal distances for men and women. There is near parity regarding the distribution of athletes when tallied by gender at the Athens Olympics, but when will women cease to be be insulted by having having abbreviated competitions? I don’t think Sarah Ulmer’s heart will explode if she rides an extra kilometer. I doubt her legs will spontaneously combust. Even though Hein Verbruggen undoubtedly yearns for the power of Zeus, I don’t expect that lightning bolts will smite her if she dares pedal beyond 3km. With Hein’s pervasive retro-ification of cycling I’m surprised that the women aren’t required to compete decked out in bloomers and parasols.

What? The Violet Ray is stuck in customs?…

I’m an Olympics junkie. Even as my partisan fascination with cycling leaves me somewhat frustrated with NBC’s coverage, I’ll watch just about any Olympic sport under the Sun. While watching the beach volleyball, the announcers put up a graphic which detailed the extensive support crew that Australia sent with their beach volleyball competitors. All the usual suspects are represented (a few doctors, a chiropractor, a masseuse, a physical therapist, a nutritionist) but the last entry in the list certainly caught my eye: the Australian beach volleyball contingent has an official, credentialed guru on the payroll. While I realize there is a valid need for world-class athletes to embrace the cerebral elements of performance excellence (I know people who swear by Tao-lite as well as Tao-heavy), my inner joker wondered what befell their team phrenologist, Violet Ray technician, and snake oil mystic.

Tyler Hamilton: Gold
Dede Demet-Barry: Silver
Bobby Julich: Bronze

Fans of professional cycling couldn’t ask for a better deserving crop of men to stand tall upon the Olympic tt podium. I’m shocked, shocked I say, that NBC’s sob-story machine barely registered a pulse and relegated the extended coverage to the 3:00am-3:45am MSNBC slot. I’m not one to get too choked up by sappiness and sentiment, but from the moment the camera was on the incredulous Julich, “I think Tyler just won the Olympics”, to the playing of the national anthem with Hamilton and Julich on the podium, to post-podium Hamilton celebrating with his wife Haven and Julich embracing his daughter Olivia and wife Angela, I was moved and extremely proud. Besides his GC podium places and stage victories, Hamilton has cemented his palmares into cycling history with historic wins in some of cycling’s granddaddy events: Liege-Bastogne-Liege and, now, the Olympic Games. Seeing Julich on the podium reminded me of a Velo-News article written in 1994 about Julich’s miserable 1993 season. Bobby competed without a team as a privateer, came up short all year, and sunk into deep depression. Here was a man who depleted his life savings, was lamenting every time he lost a water bottle because it was another $5 he had to spend, and ultimately ended up vanquished, getting fat on his couch. Phoenix-like, he rose from beyond to stand atop the Tour de France podium 5 years later. And this past winter, again on the verge of quitting the sport, Julich’s career was resurrected by Hamilton’s muse Bjarne Riis. While I have mixed feelings about Riis as a professional cyclist, there’s no doubting his skills as a manager and motivator. And don’t forget Ekimov. At 38 years old he’s still every bit as lethal as when he won his first Olympic medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Dede Demet-Barry, and Christine Thorburn mysteriously received not 1 second of television coverage of their 2nd and 4th place rides. I guess NBC decided that covering the women’s road race live, start to finish, fulfilled their obligations and totally ignored a historic day for American cycling. Their time trial’s absence was truly baffling.

I sure feel like a grousing, quibbling buffoon after making Evel Knievel references about their duds and lamenting the US sending a cadre of GC riders to the road events. But who listens to me, anyway?

While the television coverage of the men’s Olympic road race was positively abysmal (thank goodness for Eurosport, I at least could listen to live radio coverage of the men’s event), the women had the good fortune of having their entire race play out live Sunday morning on the USA network. And in a truly stunning finish, I do believe I witnessed Judith Arndt deliberately roll over and give the gold to Sara Carrigan. Wow. Evidently, Arndt was more than a little miffed that her compatriot Petra Rossner was left off the German Olympic team and made her feelings plain as day for the world to see by towing Carrigan to gold and then flipping off the German federation to cap off her mind-boggling protest. Chosing an Olympic team seems to be a particularly prickly affair: on one extreme politics can rear its ugly head if the selection is left solely up to the coaches (i.e. German women, Lithuanian women) and on the other end of the spectrum, having explicit formulas for selection largely designed to keep politics out of the selection can result in a team of GC riders and an outclassed D3 pro duking it out in a one-day classic atmosphere (i.e. USA men). Fred Rodriguez, who I think would have had the best chance for an American medal, had a very lucid analysis of our selection process and its shortcomings. At one time the US had a more coaching-centric selection process and the result was frequently pure calamity and blatant partisan bias. Read all about it in the highly recommended Dave Prouty book In Spite of Us to see how things played out in the mid-1980s.

$oDoughJone$

When I first saw this photo of Mike Jones I thought someone was playing with Photoshop, but it appears that Mr. Jones actually competed while wearing the uber-$ around his neck. I guess the HealthNet DS doesn’t share the draconian sentiment of ONCE team director Manolo Saiz who removed about 20 pounds of jewely from Johan Bruyneel’s neck before a Tour de France time trial with these (paraphrased) words, “I didn’t pay all this money to have my guys on the lightest bikes to have it spoiled by someone wearing all this extra weight around his neck”. Fight the power, Mike.