The Amgen Tour of California is finally over and done with, all praise to Cthulhu, may his (its?) tentacles grow ever longer. As tours go, it was not particularly captivating, but I did enjoy a couple of stages, including the last go-round of four in stage eight, the finale.
You have an untimely mechanical for defending champ Levi Leipheimer (RadioShack), U.S. national champion George Hincapie (BMC) off the front, Garmin-Transitions abso-fuckin’-lutely drilling it in the bunch for Dave Zabriskie, and a shitload of attacks from everybody and his grandmama on the final trip up to Mullholland Highway, all of which race leader Mick Rogers (HTC-Columbia) beats back all by his lonesome. Then a fast, scary descent to the finish with Garmin’s Ryder Hesjedal first across the line. Boo-yah.
Messy as hell, fun to watch, and if an Aussie won the overall and a Canuck the finale, so what? Tough shit. I like Aussies and Canucks. They’re kind of like Americans, only with bigger balls and better beer.
Now we can all go back to giving the Giro the attention it deserves. Anybody watch today’s stage? Count Vino’ looked like he was a quart low on the climb to Monte Zoncolan. Astana’s creature of the night finished fifth on the day at 2:26 behind Ivan Basso (yeah, no alarm bells there). Rainbow jersey Cadel Evans (BMC) was second at 1:19, and the difference between his climbing style and Basso’s was reminiscent of the Frazier-Ali fights.
Meanwhile, David Arroyo Duran (Caisse d’Epargne) still has the maglia rosa, but only in the sense that a clothes hanger holds a shirt until its proper owner slips it on. It’s a long way to the finale, with four more summit finishes en route.
Mad Blog Media 
I was only able to follow the ATOC on Velonews where some weird guy was giving the play-by-play. I was hoping for a lot more from stage 6 to Big Bear, but I guess putting a TT the day after an “uphill” finish pretty much guarantees a tepid mountain stage. The TT seemed pretty interesting and I would like to have watched today’s stage as it sounded like Garmin wasn’t going quietly on the tour’s last day.
With the Giro ending next Sunday with a TT maybe the powers that be can get a clue and realize that the grand tours can actually provide racing all the to and through the last day. I’m pretty sick of the last day typically being seen as a “parade” stage. What’s so wrong with the lead changing hands on the last day of a stage race? It’s called “exciting” “interesting” and “not boring”. Doesn’t anyone remember 1989? Now that was fun! If a race is 21 stages long then by god they should race for 21 stages.
Saw part of the Giro stage today. It was as exciting as watching bike racing usually is. Basso and Evans going mano-e-mano on the final climb was pretty exciting. Unfortunately my own ride cut the finish short, but it was still fun to watch. Can’t say the same for the ToC because I only saw last Sunday’s stage finish and parts of stages as they went along during the week. Nice to see someone other than “the anointed one” win too. What’s next?
Interesting Giro stage (followed ToC only casually through web reports now and then, didn’t look too exciting but no surprise there, eh?)finishing atop Monte Zoncolan, a rare Giro climb we’ve not done but heck, THEY’ve only done it a few times! Basso looks pretty strong but I’m hoping some rival with a bit of a punch in the mountains (rather than a steady pace that just burns off the rivals — though he did exhibit a bit more today against Evans) will break the race open later this week. Damiano Cunego looked to be getting better as the Giro enters the final phase, while the World Champ’s not looking too bad either. I think Vino’s answered those who predicted victory for him after his Trentino display — they now know Giro Trentino and GIRO d’ITALIA are different races…sorta like Casey Stoner, who cried on TV after yet again throwing his perfectly good MOTOGP Ducati on it’s side early in the race in France. He whined “everything works just fine in practice but in the race the bike crashes”. Champions are good when it counts, we’ll see who that champion is here in Italy in the next few days. Meanwhile, we get ready to leave Viterbo and start WORKING….our Vineyards to the Sea tour starts June 2 – tough work but someone’s got to do it!
Kinda like Americans … so well put.
As good as it was to see Ryder win the final stage (good because he has the ultimate bike racer’s name, and he’s equally at home on the dirt or the pavement), would have loved to see him in Italy this month. With Tyler and CVV out, Garmin has nothing left to race for save stage wins, so they ought to be a hoot this next week. Dan Martin looked pretty good yesterday, and Ryder’s compatriot Sven hasn’t been able to race for himself in ages.
“Rogers ripostes to win Amgen Tour”
It’s not often that a Velonews.com headline has me heading over to Dictionary.com for help, but this one did and I’m guessing Mr. O’Grady had something to do with it. Patrick, you put on quite an act convincing us that wine and other chemicals have left you with only two or three working brain cells, but I think otherwise. Your brain has apparently retained your vocabulary for you despite your best efforts.
Chappeau to the word smiths, their efforts are underappreciated. Sometimes.
yeah, I saw the headline and assumed ‘riposte’ was a french term for doping….ohhhhhhh come on!
Hey John the mad dog is a sandbagger you got to watch out for those guy’s, they will eat you up.
O’G may write like an asshat in this blog, but he does have a vocabulary and sometimes he’s allowed to use it. Thanks for demonstrating intelligence and education Pat.
Señores,
The same weirdo who was doing the play-by-play from AToC did indeed write that headline. I also wrote quite a few of the stories under the byline “VeloNews.com,” ’cause I’ve had plenty of bylines over the course of a long, strange career and hardly need the clips.
I’ve always liked words and language. You’d be surprised how many alleged writers don’t seem to have any fun playing with it. And writing headlines, for me, was always one of the high points of the craft.
Doing journalism is like reducing a sauce: A reporter boils down an event with all its ins and outs, a series of editors skims the fat, and the headline writer tops it all off with just a pinch of choice words.
My fave today was “Giro’s hardest stage: Italy to DC.” It’s just ridiculous enough to grab the eyeballs but summarizes the story fairly accurately. Sure beats working.
O’G — The way you describe the flow of copy from reporter to page (or screen) is positively poetic. But I think my description is more apt: The reporter writes it, and then several editors lift their legs on it.
Interesting article in today’s New York Times: The sports medicine establishment has a thriving R and D program going on learning how to beat EPO testing through the use of microdosing. Now, does anyone want to venture a guess as to how likely it is that all this research is going on without a considerable amount of cooperation and perhaps financial support from the racing establishment, and I don’t just mean from the racers themselves.
Regarding the microdosing schemes — these folks are the real villains in messing up our sport. None of these guys, BigTex, The Belgian or any of ’em are smart enough to dream up, implement and manage doping programs of this type. Only crooked docs and other scientists can make this stuff invisible to the dope testers. Perhaps they can crack the BigTex doping ring now that the Feds are involved and follow it all the way to the source? There are certainly more BALCO’s out there, not to mention the blood-transfusing operations, etc. Floyd Landis is certainly a jerk in many ways, but he just might get credit (or blame, depending on who you ask) for finally cracking open the doping mess in cycling on par with the Festina fiasco. I’ve pretty much given up hope of any real reforms coming out of Puerto but still have a slim hope Valv-Piti will finally get what’s coming to him..and I hope it’s BEFORE July!
I don’t believe for a minute that the team management and sponsors are divorced from the crooked docs and scientists. There is too much money to be made. Not to mention, I doubt one bit that the individual riders would pull this crap on their own without at minimum, a wink and a nudge from the higher ups and their own team physicians and sports medicine honchos. As Sgt. Schultz used to say, “…I see noth-ing…”
I suppose though that microdosing is better than having the racers subjected to potentially lethal experiments using EPO and other drugs, which is what killed a few riders back when the peloton first pulled the pin on the EPO hand grenade.
On the other hand, where does one draw the line? My wife used to smoke incessantly when she was writing her graduate school papers. Took her a couple decades (and moving from sea level to 7,000 feet) to finally kick that habit. Said it helped her concentrate. Shea culpa…
Hey, K,
Yeah, VeloNews has weighed in on microdosing before. It seems to help these guys fly under the radar. What we won’t do for money, fame, women, power. Sheesh.
Meanwhile, here’s a fun story from Sports Illustrated. A lot of folks are thinking that big-ass bell may finally be tolling for Texus Maximus.
Doping using private corporate funds doesn’t compare with doping using U.S. taxpayer’s funds. This could get ugly if it can be proved to have merit. Ugh. When does pro cycling stop circling the bowl?
I love the link there O’G. When I went to the site it had some ad for some sort of drug that the shrills at SI were selling. Nice ad placement too….tight smack in the middle of the story. Irony thy name is SI.
TCWSHBN is keeping quiet for one reason: Landis has go the Feds in on it, and he KNOWS that those MIBs are not going to give up until they have his arse in a sling….or a Federal Pen with Bernie Madoff.
I love the link there O’G. When I went to the site it had some ad for some sort of drug that the shrills at SI were selling. Nice ad placement too….tight smack in the middle of the story. Irony thy name is SI.
TCWSHBN is keeping quiet for one reason: Landis has got the Feds in on it, and he KNOWS that those MIBs are not going to give up until they have his arse in a sling….or a Federal Pen with Bernie Madoff.
I missed the SI ad, James, but noticed that in the June edition of BuyCycling magazine, one of the “Enthusiast” bikes being proffered to the public is the “Scott Addict R2”; see pg. 94.
When we make the drug culture part of our everyday life, is it any surprise that people actually use the shit?
By the way, WTF is an “Enthusiast” bike other than a marketing gimmick? With so much of our everyday lives being influenced by such corporate hype and dishonesty, why the fuck should I care if TCWSNBN et. al. are putting in a modified engine management unit, so to speak?
And the hits just keep on coming.
Actually, the NY Times story about Big Tex vs. the Feds has a shrill Tex ad for supplements: “Tired of Being Tired, etc., etc.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/sports/cycling/26cycling.htm
Click on the ad for instant satisfaction. Within days of starting this drug supplement regimen, you will have hot porn starlets lining up at your door…and maybe take a few seconds off your 40 km time trial time, too. Just make sure your wife doesn’t find out.
Beat me to the punch line by 2 minutes, Patrick. Whatta you on?
What am I on? I’m on my computer, 12 hours a day. What are you on? Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha.
What is this, instant messaging?
In case anyone missed the reference: http://jamoker.wordpress.com/2006/06/01/lance-armstrong-what-am-i-on-im-on-my-bike/
BigTex has always thought he was playing in the big league but I think (hope) he’ll find out it’s much, much harder to BS your way past all these feds now involved in looking into what seems to be his illicit world. How’d you like to be Radio Shack right now? How much loot did they put into this team, just in time to be butt of the DopeStrong jokes? I guess the next speculation will be whether or not BigTex shows up at LeTour…if he’s still invited? The French have dis-invited folks over less than this before. I wonder how many bike industry folks out there, who never liked the guy and thought he was a cheater, but kept quiet about it because of his influence in that same bike industry, will now turn on BigTex…especially when/if the stench of cheating gets stronger?
I wonder if TCWSNBN has any regrets for coming back? Or maybe he saw it coming anyway and needed The Shack’s big contract to pay for the big lawyer bills. If you’re gonna be in this mess, might as well be in the peloton fillin’ up that legal defense escrow account.
Have y’all noticed how many positives are coming out of the peloton this year? You’d think with the passport and the increased testing, riders would lay off. Here’s hoping the guys at Garmin are clean. If one of those guys tests positive, that would be much more than just a shame. That would finish it for me.
If TCWSNBN really cared about Kristin, he kept her far away from this crap. I’d hate to see her in jail for lying to a grand jury or worse.
Same goes for Sheryl Crow. I suspect their relationship came to an end because of this mess. I’m not a fan of her music, but I still would hate to see her get all tangled up in this–unless she’s got some good info and a bone to pick with Big Tex.
Speaking of DopeStrong, NPR sports columnist Frank Deford added his $0.02 to the pile this morning. Quipping that all pro cyclists are innocent until proven guilty, he also added that it seems the sport is destined, like all major sports, to be guilty of doping until proven innocent.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127113797
Hey, Jeff. Mario Puzo had it right: keep the wives and kids out of the family business.
again, at this point, if i’m a second or third tier racer, who saw some shit but was Omertà’d into keeping my mouth shut, i’d have to speak up at this point. not because Landis deserves some support. that’s beside the point. in fact, it doesn’t matter whether anything he said was true, not one word of it. just doesn’t matter. what matters is, what has it stirred up?
i usually dog out the “end of the world” folks, because so far they’ve always been wrong, but pro bike racing has been a joke for so long, this really might kill it. the only folks who would dump money into it at this point are the same folks who hire the likes of Levi Whatshisname (father of Sarah Palin’s grandkid) to pitch their stuff.
It just doesn’t matter whether Landis is full of shit. The horse is out of the gate, and it’s too late to try to figure out whether his shoes are nail on just right. What matters is, he’s out there stirring up shit.
So if anyone wants a job this time next year, it’s time for them to speak up, name names, and just hope for the best.
Really must be tough to be a bike journo these days. Usually it’s a question of biting the hand that feeds you, dealing with that while maintaining objectivity. But now there must be pressure to go full commando in the investigative mode, maybe act more like a prosecutor and shit-kicker than a reporter of facts.
After all of this, I’m not sure I can justify buying VeloNews anymore. Because the “competitive” part of the equation has become a bore. Maybe it’s time for VN to become more like their competition: GQ on bikes, with articles on the hot new colors for the spring wardrobe collection, and gossip on who’s sleeping with which podium girl.
Then again … I talk a mean game … but right now I’m saving up for a Zinn frame, and I’m spending my free time on Wikipedia comparing the careers of Alfredo Binda to Costante Girardengo … I guess there’s that 0.01% of the population that will stay tuned no matter how bad the picture is.
wow … too little sleep, too much coffee … because that didn’t make any sense.
trying to say, it’s gotta be tough for everyone in the bike business right now, save for the guys making frames for WalMart.
I’m getting tired of the speculation, though I’ve done more than my share. Now I say wait for some genuine NEWS on the BigTex vs Landis fiasco. Meanwhile there’s a pretty exciting race going on over here in It’ly though of course there could be plenty of doped riders here based on the NYT microdosing story ideas, but for now let’s forget about them and the lame statements that (again) cycling is 100% cleaned up from bozos like Pat McQuaid, especially the last couple of days. Monte Zoncolan was interesting to watch, Evans got criticized by some for trying to follow Basso’s infernal pace, but if he held back at his own pace, then tried to catch up later, my guess is he would have been further back. Cadel seems to know what he’s doing and is doing pretty damn well for a guy without much of a team, especially when compared to the “squadrone” (as they call it here) of Liquigas. Yesterdays chrono stage turned out be less than what it was billed in my book, the “paving” of what used to be dirt/gravel took away what I thought would be Evan’s advantage with his MTB background — I though it would be the same as the Montalcino stage. He was sort of robbed by that and gained not much for all his effort. Nibali did better than Basso on the day, did anyone notice that? Tomorrow’s a snoozer stage, especially with almost no sprinters left but Friday will be exciting as will Saturday. Our goal is to get packed up and outta Viterbo soon enough on Saturday am to get up to our HQ hotel to at least see the finale on TV. Note on today’s stage — the climb of Passo Palade in the direction they took is a ho-hum climb as we saw…but it’s an amazingly fun descent if you enjoy high-speeds and sweeping corners, all on the side of the mountain with a view (if you take a second to look) that makes it seem as though you’re in an airplane! We (or at least I) enjoy this descent as part of our Legendary Climbs of the Giro East tour in July so yours truly may get the chance to enjoy it again. The only bad thing is those TUNNELS! Plenty dark and though you couldn’t see it on TV, the surface inside is paving stones, not asphalt! Calls for some steely nerves as you hit them at 75 kph and head into the dark on the bumpy surface. One time a client’s eyewear fell off in one of them….scared the beejesus out of me when I came up on him standing in the tunnel looking for his Oakley’s Paolo “Il Falco” Savoldelli claimed in La Gazzetta a few days ago to have gone 111 kph on a descent above Val d’Aosta as an amateur — that’s moving! My personal best is “only” 100 kph, done LOOOONG ago on a big road in SoCal. It’s amazing the gyroscopic effect one feels when the wheels get going that fast and you bend the bike into a curve…something I don’t do much of on our tours anymore since the wife (always the smart one) suggested how much of a pain it would be for the tour operator to end up in the hospital!
I think my PB is about 90 kph, descending Bobcat Pass on the way back to Red River, NM. I too was amazed by the gyroscopic stability of those wheels.
steve-o: With regard to the “end of the world” for cycling, isn’t that what happened in Germany? All the big money pulled out, teams folded, and good races went away. Poof.
I don’t see that happening in Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Bicycle racing in these countries is just a massive part of the culture. It’s like hockey to Canadians, or the NFL in the U.S. But I do think sponsor money gets tighter, contracts go flat or get smaller, and some of the events go away for a while.
To some degree, as goes TCWSNBN, so go bike shops, bike racing, and general interest in cycling in the U.S. His retirement and a madison hand sling to Taylor Phinney would have been pretty ideal.
khal: My PB was done on a descent at the Tour de Los Alamos in ’88(?). 63mph. According to the intertube’s calculations, that’s 101.39kph. I couldn’t tell you if my bike gyroscoped. I was fully tucked and glancing up at a strung-out peloton, hoping no one ahead of me would lose it. Nobody did. I didn’t know what my speed was until after the race when I reviewed the Avocet numbers. It’s amazing what a 21-year-old kid will do without thinking.
Things are not so rosy in Italy with the economic crisis along with the continuous doping scandals. Only Liquigas and Lampre are ProTour and Lampre’s had their problems making the payroll. The big stars/money makers might end up on foreign teams with bigger budgets though the little guys will probably always be there — the passion is stronger than business sense (hey, I can identify with that!). There are calls for the Giro to include more of these little teams like Ceramica Flaminia and ISD-Neri if the ProTour teams continue to send their B-list guys while the A-list goes to ToC. RCS is pretty wound up about the UCI scheduling but they forget they have a Brixia Tour here for those not doing TdF each July. There seem to be more ads in Bicisport each month touting “100% Made in Italy” stuff so perhaps the tide of Asian-made stuff is slowing? With the weaker euro Italian-made stuff is more price-competitive but will the Italians take advantage of that? Cipollini’s recent ad even calls out some of the big-names in Italian bike making, claiming few, if any are actually made here while claiming his bikes are not only 100% Italian but 100% Tuscan! I’m sure he’s plenty steamed ISD-Neri, who rides his bikes, didn’t get into La Corsa Rosa, even with rising star Giovanni Visconti.
Guess I lose out (again) on the smarts issue, my 100 kph ride was when I was around 40-years-old! At 21 I was still racing around motocross tracks on Friday nights and Sunday mornings.
61 mph is my PB. Yes youth do have its folly. As regards to doping’s effect on the sport, how about the economic considerations. I’m sure Amgen and the other manufacturers don’t give the stuff away, and the hide and seek games aren’t cheap to run, either. Plus, the negative publicity doesn’t attract the real high powered sponsorship that the sport needs. Yes, I know it’s a monkey see, monkey do sport at that level, but you’d think a bunch of intelligent team owners could get together and agree to stop the madness. But, maybe they see the WWE as the model for sports profitability and just keep playing it that way. You know, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
Wow, Jeff. Where did you get that much speed going at the Tour de Los Alamos?
I must be some kid of a sissy. My PB is 56 mph/90.1 kph, scored on the descent of Hardscrabble Cañon between Mackenzie Junction and Wetmore. Scared the bejesus out of me. All I could think about was, “What’s gonna happen to me if I puncture that front tire?” Plenty, is what, and all of it bad.
I was in my late 30s or early 40s, can’t recall. So much for the notion that age brings wisdom.
I think I hit about 110 mph on several occasions on one of my motorcycles back in college, which was about as fast as it could go with me in a tuck lying flat on the gas tank. One night I got to watch a close friend crash while riding his Gold Wing in triple digits with several of us other idiots chasing him on our smaller bikes. Seeing him with a bleeding and shattered arm, waiting to be scraped up by the meat wagon, cured us all of riding stupid-fast.
Actually, I first met Tom Kellogg as part of that association of motorcycling maniacs back at the U of R. Somewhere exist some pictures taken of about a dozen of us posing on Fraternity Row right before we went motorcycle streaking through the U of R campus. Needless to say, those photos will never see the light of day…
God, I feel so conventional these days. Its tragic.
K,
One-ten on a scoot? Oh, Lord. I put a friend’s GTO into a four-wheel drift at 110 mph going around a downhill left-hander into Colorado City and it flat cured me of driving cars. I was a confirmed truck driver until I bought the Forester, and you couldn’t get that thing to crack the century mark if you kicked it out the back of the International Space Station.
A four wheel drift in a car at 110 mph would certainly clear up any problems I would have with regularity, Patrick. Glad you lived to discuss it.
110 mph on the ragged edge in a cage is probably still a better bet than letting it all hang out at 60 mph with one’s Old Guys jersey and some Giordana trow being the only thing between you (or me) and Mr. Pavement. Its all relative.
Got pulled over doing 145 mph in my Olds 442 convertible. Cop dug the car + had a brother in the Army and gave me a $20 ticket instead of hauling me off the hoosegow.
Can’t remember my top road bike speed, but was doing 39 mph on my mountain bike, whilst carrying a 75 pound ruck on the bookrack (bike was converted to urban commuting duty while stationed in Korea), at two in the morning right after the alert siren went off, when the said ruck popped a bungie, which wrapped around the brake, leading to multiple fishtails. I saw my rear end in front of me (not all that uncommon for me in general, but uncommon on a bike) at least twice on each side, somehow didn’t fall down go boom. Troops watching me got a good laugh.
khal: It was the road stage. It was in the mountains. I have no idea where the route went. I was pack fodder. I knew I had to descend faster than most ’cause I was gonna get spat out on the climbs, which is exactly what happened. I just remember being a human anaerobic yo-yo.
As for cars, PB is 130mph in my wife’s Jetta GLI between Austin and Houston. My friend had an Eagle Talon that he modified so it would go 180+. I thought I was going fast until our friend passed us.
OK,
Personal bests, motorized category: 150 mph. I wasn’t driving, I was hitchhiking out to Palmer Lake to see my old swim coach Beer Belly Kelly, and got picked up by some dude driving a Jag XKE. He lit up that long, low-slung sumbitch coming out of Monument on the rolling road to PL and in a matter of seconds I felt like a meth-addled, worm-riddled dog “mowing the lawn” across an asphalt carpet.
I wasn’t scared or nothin, but when I got out, I noticed that someone had shit on the passenger seat.