Doping in Sport, Lessons from Pro Cycling

Going by Twitter, yesterday’s story in AS, the Spanish newspaper, that Dr Fuentes was working for a Spanish soccer club seems to have delighted some cycling fans keen to see the scandal shared beyond our sport.

Twitter’s an imperfect judge of opinion at the best of times. Even if it’s a minority activity there’s something unnerving when cyclists point out other sports have doping problems: they might be right but there’s the sound of glasshouses shattering when calling for footballers and tennis players to be outed.

Still, with football being forced to confront some problems are there lessons other sports can learn from cycling’s dodgy past?

Read more

An Interview with Eurosport’s David Harmon

TV commentary is one of those jobs that everyone thinks is easy… until they try it. The next you watch a race try pressing mute and replacing the audio with your own commentary and see how you get on.

David Harmon is one of Eurosport’s commentators. If you watch cycling this year you’re bound to hear him at work, hopefully via full HD and clear audio but maybe via a pirate audio feed.

Here he talks about the job, how it’s changed, what it’s like to talk for six hours non-stop and more.

Read more

Sunday Shorts

Louisville world championships

Well done to the Louisville race crew who put on a great event. Cyclocross is booming in the US as a participatory sport and the crowds partied like Belgians on the day only, as the photo by cyclocosm shows, with added fancy dress. There was even a copycat Dirk Hofman sign spotted.

With all the talk of pro cycling going global cyclo-cross remains a specialist affair within Europe alone but you’d struggle to get the Louisville atmosphere if the worlds were awarded to France, Germany or even the brewery-rich Czech republic. It was made even better thanks to the UCI’s video stream on Youtube meaning it was available around the world for free without resorting to pirate feeds of dubious quality.

Read more

Bryan Coquard, The Green Knight

A 20 year old neo-pro with two stage wins in his first race? That’s quite a start for Europcar’s Bryan Coquard. For sure he’s got a long way to go as the opposition in the Etoile de Bessèges was not the best and this is only an early season race. Still, he’s the youngest rider in the race and his margin of victory was so big that when I put a photo on Twitter someone asked if he’d been in a breakaway because he was surely too far ahead of the bunch to have won the sprint.

Only he’s not a new name with Olympic, World, European and National medals across a range of disciplines to go with a long list of victories on the road and track alike.

Read more

Roads to Ride: The Stelvio

Stelvio Trafoi

As part of a series to explore the famous roads of cycling, here is the Passo dello Stelvio in the Italian Alps. The idea is to discover the road and its place in the world, whether as part of cycling’s history or to look at the route on a day without racing and it is open to all.

The Stelvio is Europe’s second highest paved mountain pass but superior in legend to the Col de l’Iseran thanks to history, pedigree and the sheer experience of climbing and descending this giant.

Read more

Tour of Qatar Preview

Tour of Qatar

There’s little to preview in the Tour of Qatar. The race doesn’t even bother with profiles as each stage profile is a horizontal line. Every finishing straight is wide enough to land an aircraft.

But at the same time this race matters. First as a tactical training ground, a literal sandbox to test skills and technique and if it’s not compulsive viewing, it’s the equivalent of watching a theatre troop in dress rehearsal as it is a practice session for the spring classics. But the race is also notable because Qatar is very influential in world sports, it is the world’s richest country on a per capita basis and recently won the right to the 2016 Cycling World Championships, deploying sums of money that nobody else could match.

Read more

Review: Coppi – Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo

Coppi Sykes book

Herbie Sykes promised never to write about Fausto Coppi. Visitors to Italy will find even village tobacconists sell magazines and books and these include often many cycling books, especially biographies of past Italian riders from the region. A resident of the Piemonte, the home of Coppi, Sykes had seen too many books about the man, a palimpsest of texts had obscured the past. But this is different.

This is a collection of photos accompanied by short accounts from 21 riders who were contemporaries of Coppi. The photography is excellent and surpasses the normal sports clichés. If there are one or two podium photos, there’s not one image of a victory salute.

Read more

Frank Schleck Gets A One Year Ban

Frank Schleck has got a one year ban after his positive test in the 2012 Tour de France when the rules say he should have got a two year ban. He’s got lucky after the Luxembourg Anti-Doping Agency appears to have dropped the strict WADA Code, preferring instead to speculate on the source of contamination as a reason to reduce the ban, something the Spanish tried to do with Contador after his 2010 Tour de France positive until the UCI and WADA teamed up to fix things.

So this is might not be the end of the story. WADA won’t enjoy seeing its Code applied selectively and there’s now every chance of an appeal and a longer ban.

Read more

Truth and Recrimination

McQuaid gun

Cycling’s embrace of Truth and Reconciliation did not last long. The ambitious but vague spirit of enquiry and investigation evaporated as the UCI and WADA traded angry press releases with words like “deceit” and “arrogance” being used. This is the public relations equivalent of a bar room brawl.

It’s all so disappointing as those running the sport seem preoccupied with attacking each other rather than confronting the ever-present spectre of doping. We’d all like to talk about the racing but the people at the top want to shout about themselves.

These two bodies appear unable to trust each other and resort to leaking private correspondence to win petty public relations battles. So how can anyone trust them to manage a broad and complex Truth and Reconciliation process?

Read more

Bike Fit and The Arms Race

Ryder Hesjedal position

Last week’s piece on narrow handlebars was a popular read as it highlighted the lengths – 38 centimetres in case you asked – some riders go to in the search for aerodynamic advantage.

I was going to make an observation about rider position over the years in that post too but deleted this as the narrow bars were the real story. But I promised to return to the subject and have been prompted by an article about Philippe Gilbert’s BMC bike on cyclingnews.com where bike reviewer James Huang mocks the low position and anyone who’d try to imitate the world champion:

Read more

+ More