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Italian Cycling, Part II – regions

This year’s Giro celebrates the 150th anniversary of the unification of the country, marking the moment when a collection of kingdoms, fiefdoms and other lands on the peninsula were finally united into a single nation, in part by military force.

Italy might have obvious geography, being bordered by the Alps to the north and its long “boot” standing out from the Mediterranean sea. But the country is still very much a collection of regions. I’ll generalise but ask an Italian abroad where they’re from and they’ll often state the region; if two Italians meet outside their country they will quickly enquire which region they are from. To this day there’s plenty of local pride, indeed rivalry.

il Mezzogiorno

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The Giro d’Italia is bigger than Everest

Swiss scenery

Let’s play word association. When I say “Switzerland”, what do you think of? Punctual trains, chocolate, hard currency and secret bank accounts? Cheese, cows and yodelling?  I bet mountains are an obvious thought, whether for the skiing or the postcard images of lush Alpine pastures. So when you think of the Tour of Romandie, you tend to think of a stage race for climbers. Romandie is the French-speaking area and like the whole Swiss confederation it has plenty of mountain passes.

More precisely the 2011 Tour of Romandie has 6,100 vertical metres of climbing (~21,000 feet). Despite several first category cols and plenty more other climbing, whether categorised or not, this is not the most mountainous edition of the race. Still, there are six days of racing with the prologue and you can’t escape the hills. But all this is less than one single day of mountain madness in the upcoming Giro d’Italia.

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Slow connection

A boring note but I’m travelling abroad lot for work at the moment and at home France Télécom has decided to unplug my phone line, including internet access, following a “technical problem”. They don’t seem to know when this will be fixed, just that there is a “technical problem”. They’ve bungled something but still enjoy … Read more

A new ranking system

Giro podium 2010

Team Sky’s co-sponsor IG Markets are going to launch a new rider ranking, the “IG Markets Pro Cycling Index” and it will attempt to reward panache ahead of anonymous consistency.

One of my pet hates is lists and rankings. Things like “Best film ever” or “top-10 dog breeds” can be pointless exercises and often used by newspaper editors to fill pages and generate debate, you can be sure people have opinions and, online, readers will leap to the comments section, thus generating more valuable clicks.

In cycling I find it hard to define the “best cyclist”. Is Alberto Contador better than Fabian Cancellara? Is Philippe Gilbert better than Ivan Basso? These questions are subjective and in trying to answer them we often reveal more about our preferences and biases than the riders’ abilities.

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Milan-Sanremo: worth the hype

On paper if I described a seven hour race where nothing happens until the last 10 minutes, you might not get excited. If I described a race that his very flat and often won by the sprinters, then again you might not be excited. But there’s something special about Milan-Sanremo.

Alimetria

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What Mosquera didn’t say

Ezequiel Mosquera was supposed to be Vacansoleil’s second star signing but the only reason for the Dutch team to be happy is that he hasn’t brought as much bad publicity as Riccardo Riccò. He was suspended after tests showed both he and then team mate David Garcia Da Peña had tested positive for hydroxyethyl starch … Read more

On carbon and carbon fibre

Carbon is everywhere. Can you name another atom that has so many branches of science, knowledge and uses, from carbon chemistry to carbon trading, carbon dating to carbon copies? This atom of six neutrons, six protons and six electrons can be found in the air, in the ground, in the seas and in your body. … Read more

Three cheers for Voeckler

Hip It was great to see an attacking rider win from a breakaway. The move looked doomed but the chase behind didn’t appear too organised. At one point Rabobank were chasing, a sign that they wanted to keep a lid on De Gendt’s advantage but not to bring the race back, since they don’t have … Read more

Rider websites

Many riders are marketable sports stars and like many a celebrity they have their dedicated websites. Some of these aren’t very exciting, often just a repository for images and results. Not to single him out, but Fabian Cancellara’s website isn’t a must read corner of the web. For me it’s the personal tone that interests … Read more

Shift gears

A little reminder to update your bookmarks. Many people are still visiting from http://theinnerring.blogspot.com/ and whilst you get automatically forwarded, you can gain precious seconds by updating your bookmark to https://inrng.com.

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