Sky will leave pro cycling at the end of next season to focus on other projects, according to The Guardian.
One of these projects includes Sky Ocean Rescue, a push to encourage businesses and individuals to give up single-use plastic.
Was the Wiggins jiffy bag plastic? I can’t recall. But Froome’s gotta be, though you can’t argue that Sky only got a single use out of him.
Hey, what could I tell you? Times are tough. WADA ya gonna do?
Today is the neighborhood’s biennial yard sale, an event during which one hopes against all reason that strangers will cart off one’s useless bullshit and leave money in its place. This makes the tooth-fairy tale seem reasonable by comparison.
And now for something completely different: There is no truth to the rumor that Bradley Wiggins is skipping the 2013 Tour de France in order to stand in for the late Graham Chapman in a revival of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
Just when you thought stage 14 of the 2012 Tour de France couldn’t get any worse, it did.
The Pyrénéan stage, with its two category-one climbs — which no less an authority than John Wilcockson had expected to provide “the best chance yet” for Cadel Evans, Vincenzo Nibali or Jurgen Van den Broucke to yank Bradley Wiggins out of his golden palanquin — turned into a nothing-burger of a training ride, with a break a quarter-hour up the road and the GC guys back in the bunch trading organic chamois-cream recipes. (Handy household hint: If you see Mark Cavendish at the front of the bunch on a climb, nobody is busting his balls. Except maybe Cavendish.)
That was bad enough for those of us trying to keep a live update, well, lively.
But then some fuckwit or fuckwits unknown decided it would be fun to salt the final climb with tacks.
Yes, tacks.
There were some 30 punctures, though whether that refers to tires or riders remains unclear. Evans had three flats of his own — the first left him standing atop the final summit with a teammate who also lacked a functional rear wheel, awaiting neutral service, AAA or the Better World Club, whichever would accept his Credit Lyonnais credit card.
Evans finally got going again, and maillot jaune Bradley Wiggins asked the bunch to ride piano until the defending champ got back on, though Europcar’s Pierre Rolland, Lotto-Belisol and Liquigas-Cannondale apparently missed the memo. Those rascals soon got sorted out, however, and that was that, although Rolland should consider himself out of the Miss Congeniality competition this year.
Robert Kiserlovski got the worst of it — Jani Brajkovic flatted after that last climb, Kiserlovski apparently swerved over to give him a wheel, Levi Leipheimer T-boned him, and Kiserlovski left the Tour with a busted collarbone.
Oh, yeah — there was some actual racing going on. Luis Leon Sanchez popped out of that break while green jersey Peter Sagan was having a nosh and rode solo to the stage win. Sagan had looked like the man of the hour until Sanchez caught him with his mouth full.
“Yes, I should have kept a better eye on him,” Sagan told Cyclingnews.” In the last few kilometers I needed to eat. I wasn’t expecting him to attack me at that point. He is experienced and I am not bitter about it. Even if I’d managed to stay with him I might not have won.”
Oy. Long day on the job for a variety of reasons, and no, don’t ask.
Nice to see Bradley Wiggins try to lead out Edvald Boassen Hagen for the stage win, but I’m still having trouble warming up to ‘Is Lordship for some reason.
Maybe it’s racial memory. He is English, after all. But then I always liked the Beatles, Stones, Python, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, etc.
Maybe it’s his manner with the sporting press. Pro athletes often forget that if they didn’t get any media coverage many of them would be wearing paper hats and throwing packets of spuds at strangers through a drive-up window, or standing up to their hips in something nasty with only a shovel for company.
Nah. It’s the sideburns. That shit has to go. Wiggo’ makes Bob Roll look like James Bond, f’fucksake.
Oh, cycling is a cruel sport. One wonders what Chris Froome and Tejay van Garderen might have been able to do today had they not been restricted to dragging around their respective team leaders, Bradley Wiggins and Cadel Evans?
Poor old Evans looked like he was trying to choke down a double-decker shit sandwich on the final climb while TVG appeared as fresh as a daisy. And Froomey shelled the yellow jersey while towing him past a group of stragglers and had to back off the gas lest Wiggo’ call him a nasty name at the team dinner this evening.
“Wankers & Cunts.” Hmm. That would be a great name for a XXX theater, eh?
Meanwhile, chapeau to Pierre Rolland. He was on the floor at one point after trying (and failing) to tripod around a hairpin corner, and he got up and won the damn’ stage. A fine performance for the home folks.
Mad Blog Media 