The Giro d’Italia served up a real quad-snapper of an individual time trial today. Alas, the Black Knight failed to achieve his primary goal (“None shall pass!”), which in this case meant putting everyone to the sword and skipping gaily to the final maglia rosa.
Consigliere Pelkey and I were calling the action at Live Update Guy, and it was rarely dull — for a time trial, anyway. ‘Is Lordship flatted and still managed to finish second, so fair play to him. But I still hope someone else is wearing the pink shirt when it’s all over.
For some reason I just can’t warm up to Wiggo’. Racial memory, no doubt. One of his ancestors probably had one of mine drawn and quartered for pig theft, public drunkenness or some other shameless act of knavery.
I bet the folks at Pinarello are getting a tad weary of watching the Black Knight chucking their nifty bikes about like empty packets of crisps, too. If he keeps it up he’s liable to have both the IRA and the Mafia after his narrow ass.
Apricot frosting: Snow drapes the apricot tree at the House Back East™.
This is what things looked like around here this morning. By afternoon, the sun was out, the snow was gone and the temps were back up in the 40s.
Tomorrow, we’re looking at 55 and mostly sunny. That’s just how we roll here in Colorado.
And while we’re speaking of rolling, it seems that my old comrade Charles Pelkey is off the disabled list, which means — yes, yes, yes — Live Update Guy will suit up for the Giro d’Italia, which commences Saturday in Napoli.
Consiglieri Pelkey is a fan of the wee small hours of the morning, so look for him to be shoveling the wisdom at dark-thirty while I enjoy the indie movie playing on the inside of my eyelids until 7 a.m. or so.
Hey, God doesn’t get up until 6 — I can tell, because that’s when the light comes on.
Good on Sho-Air president Scott Tedro and his team for having a go here. The issue has been simmering for quite a while now, even getting the attention of the mainstream media, and I’m curious to see whether more licensees will join Sho-Air in taking a stand.
UCI and USAC are spreading the usual fertilizer about growing the sport and professional standards, hinting none too suavely that anyone racing an unsanctioned event is practically begging to get flogged by dopers or hung out to dry by substandard insurance.
But it smells like the same old monopolistic, might-makes-right, fuck-you-we’re-in-charge-here bullshit that led to the American Cycling Association, the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association and other groups going their own way back in the day.
I don’t personally have a dog in this fight. My last race was 10 years ago, when the ACA was still the Rebellion to USA Cycling’s Empire. Today it’s once again a client state of the Empire, reclaiming its old name of the Bicycle Racing Association of Colorado, and I have no interest in repatriating in order to spend my weekends getting shelled at parking-lot crits in Denver while USAC and the UCI pass the time hunting new ways to piss off everyone in the sport.
That said, I’m happy to see someone with skin in the game taking a stand against this ridiculous rule. If unsanctioned events pose any threat at all it’s to the governing bodies’ bottom lines. They claim to be offering a superior product. Fine. Let them prove it in the marketplace instead with the rulebook.
That’s No. 2, a’ight. (I’d credit the shooter but I can’t nail down its source.)
I thought cycling fans worshiped the hard men at the spring classics until I endured the online wailing, the virtual gnashing of teeth and the rending of digital garments that accompanied Peter Sagan’s gruesomely juvenile fondling of a podium girl at the Ronde van Vlaanderen.
Heavens to Merckx. A 23-year-old jock does something knuckleheaded in front of the cameras and from the caterwauling you’d think HBO had canceled “Game of Thrones.”
Some perspective, if you please. Ours is a sport focused on men who compete wearing garments that would shame a Lexington Avenue shemale for the honor of getting trophies that look like Home Depot garden-center remainders and air kisses from killer hotties who are holding their breath until they can rub up against something that smells better, like the homeless guy talking to himself on the train, or maybe a paycheck.
Then the guys in the plastic pants work up a big one and ejaculate a frothy fluid all over anyone within range.
I mean, as George Carlin once quipped, you don’t have to be Fellini to figure this one out.
Was Sagan out of line? Of course. Did you ever do anything stupid in public without the questionable excuse of being The Next Big Thing In Pro Cycling at an age when many a young fellow has just graduated college and is trying to decide which Mickey D’s can make best use of his B.A. in English? Seems likely. I know that if Twitter had been around when I was 23 I’d never have lived to see 24.
Hot links from two prominent bicycle-racing websites.
It would have been swell if the podium girl in question had swung around and slapped the smirk off Sagan’s face and hissed, “Only the winner gets to touch me!” Or if Bernard Hinault had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hurled him off the stage. Then we could all move on from our long international nightmare.
But this tempest on Twitter strikes me as a bit over the top.
How about a little outrage over the lack of opportunities for (and coverage of) women racers? Doesn’t anyone find it disturbing that slender models smooching smelly Belgians get more TV time than women pros? Has anyone on the fainting couch noticed that certain bicycle-racing websites derive some of their revenue from links that could more charitably be described as “questionable?”
Maybe it’s time cycling did without the podium ceremony, in which beautiful women are among the spoils claimed by victorious male gladiators. It seems anachronistic, a bit of theater that has outlived its usefulness, a dinosaur long overdue for its date with the tar pits — you know, like the UCI.
The biting of the medals, the spraying of the bubbly, the raising of the arms (at which the podium girls take a few paces back) — it all makes for lousy imagery, until some hormone-crazed showboat decides to play a little grab-ass.
And then what on the cobbles is a thing of beauty starts to look like your cousin’s wedding, with drunk Uncle Buster mistaking a bridesmaid for an hors d’oeuvre.
• Late update: Young Master Sagan apparently has been taken to the woodshed, from whence issues this video apology.
• Even later update: Good lord, the putz has apologized and they’re still at it on Twitter. These people need to get laid. Get jobs. Get stuffed. Jaysis.
Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Yes, it’s time once again for the Tour of Flanders, and no, I have absolutely no idea who’s gonna win the sonofabitch, so don’t ask.
Still, it should be fun to watch (it pretty much always is). And if your idea of a good time is watching the hardmen tackle the cobbles via your computer, well, you can follow the Ronde on one of the feeds provided by cyclingfans.com.
The video could be live as early as 6 a.m. Eastern, and most of the usual suspects will be on the road — Peter Sagan, Fabian Cancellara, Tom Boonen, Sylvain Chavanel and a whole lot of other mugs who have all the chance of a banana in the monkey house.
Next week, Charles Pelkey and I plan to crank up the Live Update Guy machinery for Paris-Roubaix, so stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy the comparative peace and quiet of strong men weeping at the Ronde.
