Tour de France organisers ASO briefly published stage details on their website this afternoon and Dutch journalist Sander Slager alerted me to this via twitter. They’ve since taken down the listings but I was fast enough to copy the information down.
Here is the 2012 Tour de France.
Luckily there’s more to the sport than out of control sports officials. This Sunday’s Paris – Tours is one of the autumn classics and often known under the label of “the sprinters classic”. The race doesn’t actually start in Paris, but outside the French capital in a small town called Voves. Nevertheless the distance of 230km is exactly the same if you started in central Paris and rode to the city of Tours. This is because the route snakes, especially with a kink in the final to borrow some hillier terrain, the potential launch pad for attacks.
History
Today the race enjoys the status of a classic, the term used to describe a prestigious international race that has stood the test of time. It’s fashionable for organisers of new races to name their event a “classic” for example the one-off Olympic test race was branded the London Surrey Cycle Classic. But Paris-Tour is authentic, with the first edition held in 1896. Nevertheless the history has been uncertain, with cancellations for war and for a while the route was modified as a loop in the region. The list of winners includes many sprinters but it remains one of the few classics that Eddy Merckx never won.
There’s a worrying story over on cyclingnews.com about the lack of anti-doping testing in the Tour of California, and also in the Tour of Utah or USA Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado too. Specifically there were no blood tests and the story says this was because the UCI pulled out of a deal at the last minute with the US authorities, thwarting their plans for comprehensive testing. Read the piece first to make sense of the following.
There’s 100 days until the 2012 cycling season starts with the Tour Down Under on Sunday 15 January 2012. It’s just a round number but us humans seem to like them.
I had to put yesterday’s piece in the conditional tense and use a question mark in the title. That’s no longer necessary given the letters sent by the UCI President Pat McQuaid are now confirmed by further sources… including the UCI itself.
Oddly the UCI started by denying this. When asked about the letters, official spokesman Enrico Carpani told the Velocast:
“I don’t know from where you got this, but I can only firmly deny UCI took such initiative. We are not used to work on this way.“
A press release from the UCI sets out which teams have a World Tour licence for 2012 and which teams have applied to stay in the top flight and which teams want to renew their licence:
The UCI is traditionally the governing body of the cycle sport but, via a subsidiary called Global Cycling Promotions, is now also staging the Tour of Beijing, making it not merely a governing body that sits above the sport but also a player on the ground with its own business interests.
This conflict of interest has worried some for a while. But now there could be evidence of the extraordinary steps the UCI is taking in order to further its commercial activities.
The Velocast has obtained a copy of the letter that appears to be sent from UCI President Pat McQuaid directly to team sponsors:
It’s lunchtime across Europe, the almost sacrosanct pause in the day. For anglo-saxon readers used to non-stop life, in much of Europe many shops close, kids go home from school and those in offices are prone to long lunch breaks and a glass of wine. Not everywhere of course but if you do want to stop for a meal then check out the Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen in Oudenaarde, Belgium. Good food and cycling go together, whether for basic fuel or as a means to sample local produce that you ride past but this takes things to a new level. It’s a museum that celebrates De Ronde, as the Tour of Flanders is often known. But it has a restaurant too and you can see the menu above. Note the dishes. There’s Spaghetti Boonenaise, Croque Masseur and Pollo Bettini.
Having sponsored HTC-Highroad, Specialized will continue to sponsor several of their top riders for 2012 and beyond in a deal announced today. No it’s not Mark Cavendish, this is about the women’s team.
