Yesterday’s post on points explained the importance of March and April for teams and riders alike. But if the start of the new season is a month away, most of the peloton faces damp and cold roads. Some find snow and ice block the way.
It’s a case of fight or flight. Riders can don the thermals and do battle with the winter and adopt alternative training plans. Or they can fly to somewhere warmer, lodging in out of season resorts where weak sunlight and quiet roads await.
A piece by Cyclingtips discussed the rise and fall of café culture in Melbourne, Australia. There the café is a big part in the local cycling scene, a destination for many rides. Similarly Matt Seaton writes the of “mysterious affinity between cafes, coffee and cycling” in Britain.
If coffee, cafés, cakes and cycling often go together they rarely connect in Europe. In countries like Italy, Belgium or France, a coffee is consumed quickly and a café stop rarely features on the ride, if it does it is usually incidental.
Fans crowd the barriers, dressed in yellow hats distributed by sponsors they look like sunflowers as they turn towards the stars of sport. Arms are outstretched, often to take a photo and mouths are open as people cheer. Despite a veil of cloud, everything is bright. Flags from Africa and Europe are visible and TV cameras beam the scene around the world. You can imagine the noise from the crowd, the TV commentators, the helicopters. This is the Tour de France.
Yesterday’s post showed a boring road with leaden skies. It’s from a town called Davézieux whose only claim to fame is that the Montgolfier brothers come from here. The brothers invented the hot air balloon, perhaps motivated by a need to escape from this drab place.
Only the photo in yesterday’s piece and the one above show the same piece of road. Check the crack in the middle of the road, note the arcing lamp posts and scope the roof tiles on the building on the right.
What do you think of the place above? The grey skies and the truck are obvious, a dull place on a dull day. Look again and you can see the road is drying out, the dark parts bear witness to damp weather and suggest a rough surface where the water can briefly shelter from the … Read more
Gianni Meersman had a great start to the season, proving a useful finisher with a stage win in Paris-Nice for example. Now he’s leaving Lotto-Belisol, exploiting a break clause in his contract if the squad does not make it into the World Tour for 2013. The team seem to think they will and as set out during the week on here, his ranking points count for the squad on the 20 October deadline. Now he’s gone the team get to keep his points whilst the licence is decided but are liable for a giant fine, from 10,000 to 500,000 Swiss Francs (about the same sum in US dollars) under UCI rules. Ouch.
When Christian Prudhomme presented the 2013 Tour de France he started by singing the praise of the Mouvement Pour un Cyclisme Crédible (MPCC), a group of teams who have signed up to an ethical charter. It does sound good only nobody knows much about it.
The same goes for other groups in the sport. Did you know there is a union that works for pro cyclists? And that the main pro teams are represented by a group called the AIGCP?
Each of these three organisations represents something important in the sport but at the same time they’re discreet to the point of being invisible.
I can reassure readers that the 20 October is a normal day in France. The first day of April is reserved for poisson d’avril jokes. The news that Christophe Bassons has been given a one year ban for missing an anti-doping control is no laughing matter.
How did this happen? Should he banned? Here’s a look at the case, the rules and more.
Marco Marcato wins Paris-Tours from a three man sprint. The trio held off a surprise attack by John Degenkolb, the German sprinter went rogue with 10km to go and almost caught the leaders in the final straight.
Dutch champion Niki Terpstra launched the sprint and Marcato has swept across the road, forcing Laurens De Vreese to change direction. This briefly robbed the Belgian of momentum and gave Marcato time to sit up and celebrate as he won the fastest ever one day classic, averaging 48.629km/h. This was the moment the race was won.
Labelled “the sprinters’ classic”, this Sunday’s race might have a flat route and a long finishing straight but in fact most of the winners since 2000 have come from breakaways and attacks. Since the majority of bike races end in a bunch sprint, it means the race is far from the foregone conclusion its title suggests and it can offer an action-packed final half-hour.
Australian broadcaster SBS covers most of cycling in Australia with the rights to the Tour de France and plenty more, including the Cycling Central website.
In recent months there’s been a regular podcast offering comment and analysis from their staff. And tagged on to this is a quick mention of a new French radio show, Radio Vélo.