Twenty roses do tend to fill up a small living room.
Yukiya Arashiro nearly pulled off a stage win today for his Bbox Bouygues Telecom squad. He started the day’s break — a break that, astoundingly, made it all the way to the line, thanks in large part to his hard work in the final kilometers — and what thanks did he get? The poor sod saw Quick Step’s Jérôme Pineau and Cofidis’ Julien Fouchard zip past him at the line. How does one say “Ce me fait chier!” in Japanese?
While we’re discussing things that suck, it snowed here briefly this morning. Naturally, the furnace went on the blink in solidarity. We’re starting to suspect our Honeywell programmable thermostat, which is about more one cold spring morning away from getting the old Han Solo treatment from me and my S&W .357 Magnum. Probably take out one of the neighbors in the process. The old hand cannon packs quite a wallop.
The chill must have been good for the roses I bought Herself yesterday, though. Just like sitting in the cooler at Platte Floral, except for the big white cat with the foliage fetish who keeps rubbing up against them.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is fed up with being trapped in the cheap cardboard box of text-based live updates. She wants her streaming, and she wants it now!
Lots of interesting chatter in comments about the coverage of bicycle racing in the Age of the Internets. I’ve been at it for about 20 years now, and the changes I’ve seen have not all been for the better, any more than they have been in the mainstream media.
We in the press were late to realize how easily we could be bypassed. Think of the media as this great stone edifice, an imposing castle standing athwart the road from News to Youse. None shall pass — not without paying tribute, anyway.
Well, Al Gore and his pals done went and built a bypass — the high-speed Infobahn — and now sleepy Journalism Lane gets about as much paying traffic as the frontage road alongside I-25, formerly known as Highway 85-87, if I recall correctly.
The organizers of the Giro are giving their video away — I’ve been watching the race on the Gazzetta dello Sport website. The Amgen Tour of California folks were doing the same thing last year. In neither case did I have to install any extra bits of this and that to make it happen. Other events, like the spring classics, can be had via pirate video — sites like cyclingfans.com hunt down high-quality streams like fly fishermen on meth.
Nobody invites me to the strategy sessions at Competitor Group Inc. HQ in San Diego, for obvious reasons. But if they did, I’d ask whether we’re trying to secure the rights to stream video from the grand tours. And if we’re not, then how come?
Sure, it has to be expensive, if it can be had at all, especially when those millions of eyeballs start a-buggin’ and the server farm commences to smokin’. And yeah, there are still plenty of cube dwellers who will settle for a text-based live update (easier to hide from the boss, don’t you know). Charles does a great job with the VN live, especially when it comes to promptly answering questions from the tuned-in tifosi. Me, I’m more of a color guy, especially if that color is blue.
But a text-based live update, no matter how well it’s done, seems so … last millennium.
I’m guessing most cycling fans want to watch the actual race, preferably augmented by some informed commentary. The CGI boss-fella is Peter Englehart — the Outdoor Life Network honch’ who was responsible for OLN’s acquisition and production of the Tour de France — so who knows? We may yet see some action on that front.
If not, things are gonna get awfully dark around the ol’ castle.
Well, Alexander Vinokourov keeps saying he’s back, and it seems that Count Vino’ ain’t just a-woofin’. He has the maglia rosa after three stages of the Giro, and poor Christian Vande Velde has another busted bone and some trainer time to look forward to.
I had to run the live update for a while today over at VeloNews.com in addition to writing the day’s stage report, and if the live was a tad spastic it’s because I do this almost, um, never. Happily, European correspondent Andrew Hood chipped in to supply some actual information to offset my ignorance.
Cuddles Evans is a mite pissed off after losing the jersey today, and who can blame him? He told Agence France Presse that he was doing just fine until the wind started up “and coming round a corner all the Sky team were on the ground. The rest of the guys fell on top of them.”
Man, the roads in Holland were covered in Lycra and blood today. I think everybody fell off in stage 2 of the Giro d’Italia except Graham Watson. It was actually something of a snoozer until these guys started going down like Linda Lovelace.
Tyler Farrar fell off and still managed to win the sonofabitch. Funny, Farrar doesn’t sound Belgian. Meanwhile, Cadel Evans has the pink shirt, about three weeks too early.
And last but not least, it seems the Leadville Trail 100 is now a stage race. You need a bike for the first stage and a lawyer for the second.
The Flash and I have exactly one thing in common: red kit.
I really thought BMC’s Brent Bookwalter was going to hang on for the win in today’s Giro opener until I watched Sky’s Bradley Wiggins rippin’ those Amsterdam corners without coming off his aero’ bars. Hijo, madre, puto, cabron. Like the man says, you can’t win if you don’t play, and Wiggo’ is most definitely a player. Chapeau to him.
And chapeau to Bookwalter, too, for holding onto the hot seat as long as he did. “I am a little speechless — my head is still spinning a little bit,” Bookwalter said afterward. “I really had no expectations of doing a ride like that going into it.”
He even nipped his team captain, world road champ Cadel Evans, who gave Bookwalter an attaboy for the effort.
“It’s a very special situation to have a guy like Cadel come in to say, ‘Impressive ride,’ it really means a lot,” Bookwalter said. No doubt.
I have a soft spot for time trials. My first race was a TT — the Colorado time-trial championships on the old Strasburg course, back in 1987 or ’88 — and I actually won a couple as a masters racer, one in Colorado (the Skyline Drive TT) and the other in New Mexico (the Tour de Los Alamos).
Mostly I was bringing a knife to a gunfight, though. Kent Bostick and John Frey ruled the roost when I lived in New Mexico, covering the 40km Moriarty course in 48 minutes and under when I was lucky to duck under 57 minutes. And there were plenty of other dudes in both states who could (and did) make me look like a chump without even putting it in the big ring.
Even so, it was fun. Special equipment, skinsuit and helmet — a guy gets to feel like a comic-book superhero for an hour or less. What’s not to like?
Mad Blog Media 