The Christmas quiz was meant to be hard but also to raise a few points about the sport such as weird race names, vanishing events and more. Here are all the answers and some points to discuss too.
Month: December 2017
10 Roads to Ride
This blog’s road to rides section is enduringly popular and consequently there’s stream of email enquiries from readers wanting to know which ones are best, often people are planning a trip to the mountains or even a first visit to Europe and want to visit the roads featured. It’s always difficult to rank them, but for the fun of it here is a suggested top-10, some famous and some that ought to be.
The Christmas Holiday Quiz
A Christmas quiz with 40 questions. Some are obvious, some are odd, many can’t be Googled and a few are fiendish.
By all means have a go and there’s a token prize for the winner but some of the questions are posed because the answers should set up some interesting discussion points.
The Moment The Race Was Sold?
There’s news that the trial of Alexandr Vinokourov and Alexandr Kolobnev over the alleged sale of the win Liège-Bastogne-Liège is going ahead next March. This is an old story or rather a slow story that has yet to reach a conclusion but brings some intriguing angles from how the law will deal with race tactics; to helping us explore how much a race is actually worth rather than the prize list and more.
Lowlights of 2017
Having picked five highlights of the year, a scan of some of this year’s lowlights. In no particular order here are a few boos, hisses, gripes and cock-ups…
Specified Substance Shorts
A collection of Froome and Sky loose ends. First one of this week’s blog topics was going to be how Team Sky could be coming to an end. No, not for the reasons in the news, instead down to corporate activity far away on Wall Street. Disney has announced it is buying 21st Century Fox, the company which ultimately owns Sky. You might have seen the 21st Century Fox logo on the Sky kit. It seems probable the Sky brand lives on, the threat to the team comes from the Murdoch family,nif James Murdoch goes and does something else. He’s been the pro team’s biggest backer and without him the new owners may decided enough is enough… or current management think their sponsorship has had a good run, time to try something less accident-prone.
Chris Froome’s Salbutamol Case
The UCI has announced that Chris Froome has given an Adverse Analytical Finding for Salbutamol following a test during the Vuelta a España. The announcement alone is curious given two newspapers seem got a scoop to have got hold of the story but add in that it’s Froome, that he could be stripped of the Vuelta title, serve a ban and that the substance in question has particular rules make this a complex topic and Twitter today has seen more speculation than a Bitcoin chatroom. Let’s try to explore the matter at hand…
The Giro’s New Jerusalem
The Giro’s recent route announcement confirmed the race is returning to Rome, a publicity coup for the mayor Virginia Raggi (pictured). It’s often seemed odd having a national tour that doesn’t visit the nation’s capital, more so given Rome cityscape can provide stunning images. But the ensuing story of the route wasn’t about Rome. As well as the route being presented – more of which soon – one snafu was the use of race graphics mentioning “West Jerusalem” as the start location only for the Israeli government to threaten to pull the funding if this wasn’t promptly changed to “Jerusalem”. And lo it was.
This small spat highlights the ongoing sensitivity over the territorial disputes between Israelis and Palestinians. There are plenty of other places to discuss this and the point is that the Giro’s start is so controversial this blanked out thoughts of the racing on the opening days with more focus on the labels and their political sensitivity than the actual roads.
Highlights of 2017: Part V
The last of the five picks is the final stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné, a 115km sprint across several Alpine passes. These short stages are like dessert as they’re best served after other courses have been consumed and this came after a week of good racing and set things up nicely for the Tour de France… possibly too well.
Highlights of 2017: Part IV
Which stage of the Tour de France to pick? As the dominant event on the calendar it attracts the best riders at the top of their game but this alone doesn’t ensure good racing. What helped was the second weekend of racing as the race reached the Jura mountains where one day of superb racing set up the next.