Category: Cycling Media

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Crime+Fashion=Fashion Crime

Dedicated to bringing our dozens of readers only the highest-quality deep insights into the workings of the Tour de France (or TOURdafrance, as Frankie Andreu likes to say), we turn now to podium fashions. Specifically, the migraine-inducing outfits sported by the models condemned to presenting the daily trophy knick-knacks to the leader of the King of the Mountain competition. As the whole world knows, the KOM leader wears a red-on-white polka-dot jersey. Here’s renowned Tour non-winner Michael Rasmussen, without the jersey …

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… and with it:

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We’d start our fashion advice to Michael with an urgent plea for god’s sake keep your shirt on. But he’s not the focus of today’s essay. No, it’s the apparition below we want to address.

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Yes, the model is comely as all get out. She almost pulls it off, even with the thing that’s been stuck to her head. But in the world of high cycling fashion, as in the world of cycling, almost doesn’t cut it. Why? Let’s face it, outside a measles ward or a drunken company picnic, polka dots are always a tough look to carry off. But even if the mass of red spots doesn’t put you off, the lady cummerbund tied in a flouncy red bow and the parachute-style skirt should. Maybe you can only appreciate this work of fashion after seeing the podium models trying to manage it in a 20 mph wind. After watching the presentations this year, we theorize that the women presenting the King of the Mountain tchotchkes are guilty of something–maybe shop-lifting from Carrefour, the store chain that sponsors the KOM competition–and this is their punishment.

[Note: All three pictures here were uncredited and are used without permission. In order from top to bottom, they were found here, here, and here.]

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Team Time Trial: Rules, Please

Watching Stage 4, the team time trial, the Versus coverage focused mostly where it always does: on road mishaps, on any and all drama involving American riders, and on the clock. That’s fine as far as it goes. But the result of the stage–with race leader Fabian Cancellara and Lance Armstrong ending in a dead heat for their total time–begged an explanation of how the heck the officials would break the tie.

There was mention of a “countback,” but no one ever said what that was, who did it, or how it worked. And I have to say, still not having done any homework on it, that I still don’t understand how Cancellara and not Armstrong wound up wearing the yellow jersey after the stage.

I’m no statistician or nothin’, but the gap between Armstrong’s Astana team and Cancellara’s Saxo Bank squad was reported at 40.11seconds. Just to be clear, that means Astana’s team time, the time awarded to Armstrong, was 40.11 seconds faster than Saxo Bank’s. Going into the stage, Cancellara was 40 seconds ahead of Armstrong. Not 40.2 or 40.99–just 40. So if Armstrong was 40.11 seconds faster than Cancellara … isn’t his total time for the race so far .11 seconds better than Cancellara’s.

Well, no, if you believe what you saw during the post-stage podium presentation. No gripe from me–I think Cancellara is swell, and Ben Stiller looked cute playing the role of ugly podium girl (the actual podium girl was a knockout if I may say so). So all I’m asking from the genius broadcasters of the stage is to explain this to your public. That’s all. And if anyone understands the timing issue and how it was resolved, please tell us.

Another matter the Versus boys didn’t get around to explaining on the live broadcast this morning was how riders who get dropped during the team event are timed. Do they get the same time as the rest of the team? That was an especially important issue for Garmin-Slipstream, which had four riders go off the back during the TTT.

Luckily, the official Tour website has something to say on this:

“… The time recorded for a team will be the time of the fifth rider. For those riders who are left behind during the team time-trial stage, their own time (real time) will be applied and taken into account for the individual general standings. The organisers have decided to go for a relatively short stage (39 km) around Montpellier to limit the consequences of the cancellation of this “comprehensive insurance.”

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Cavendish: On-Bike Fisticuffs

Earlier today, Mark Cavendish twittered this re: the end of yesterday’s stage (he was using Columbia teammate Mark Renshaw’s account):

Yesterday with 3km to go, Piet Rooijakkers (skil shimano) kidney punched me. Is he a:stupid b:crazy c:disrespectful d:all of the above? Cav

OK–what’s all that about? Maybe a little more than Cavendish let on. Here’s what The Guardian says:

Starting in Monaco, the stage was run in heat that touched 40 degrees and raised temperatures in the peloton, too. As the teams started to wind up for a hectic finish, the combustible Cavendish became embroiled with another rider. In his account, given at the post-race press conference, the guilty man was Kenny van Hummel, a Dutch rider with the Skil-Shimano team.

“He took his hands off the bars and hit me,” Cavendish said. “I was pretty annoyed about that. It’s disrespectful.”

According to the Skil-Shimano team the rider was Piet Rooijakkers, another Dutchman who had been barged and could not help touching Cavendish. When Cavendish allegedly reacted by tugging the Skil rider’s shirt, Rooijakkers lashed out.

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Tour de France Riders Who Twitter

A brief list, along with number of followers. Some Tour and cycling notables below the race group. Send me more if you have ’em.

Name (Team) Twitter handle (linked) Followers
Lance Armstrong (Astana) lancearmstrong 1.27 million
Levi Leipheimer (Astana) LeviLeipheimer 45,913
George Hincapie (Columbia-HTC) ghincapie 28,654
David Zabriskie (Garmin) dzabriskie 17,158
Christian Vande Velde (Garmin) ChristianVDV 15,738
Mick Rogers (Astana) mickrogers 12,582
Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) CadelOfficial 8,863
Mark Renshaw (Columbia-HTC) markrenshaw1 4,208
Steven de Jongh (Quickstep) stevendejongh 2,616
Bradley Wiggins (Garmin) bradwiggins 1,627
Brett Lancaster (Cervelo) bdlancaster 1,286

And other notables:

Johan Bruyneel (Astana director) johanbruyneel 26,647
Greg Henderson (Columbia-HTC) Greghenderson1 960
Chris Horner (Astana) hornerakg 12,133
Robbie Ventura (Versus TV commentator) RobbieVentura 1,885
Robbie McEwen (Katusha) mcwewenrobbie 13,616
Jonathan Vaughters (Garmin director) Vaughters 1,684
Phil Liggett (Versus TV) PhilLiggett 9,348
Chris Boardman (retired fast guy) Chris_Boardman 1,341
Floyd Landis (one-time ’06 Tour winner) TheRealFloydL 6,126
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We’re Back

I’ve neglected this little blog–partly a symptom of neglecting something far more serious: riding. But I won’t go into all that just now. For the next three weeks, anyway, I’m back.

In just a few hours, the lads will start clicking in and another Tour will be under way. There may have been a time earlier this season when I felt I had some idea of the shape of professional cycling this year; I mean, as much an idea as I ever have. I don’t have that sense now, and I haven’t been reading the racing media. In the U.S.A.’s general media–the San Francisco Chronicle, for instance, with its story today from a Hearst reporter somewhere–the Lance Armstrong fog has set in and set in good. Meaning that if you’re following the race from North America, it’ll be hard to see around the Lance legend during the Tour, or at least until it cracks, if it does.

Personally, I find it hard to imagine he’ll win this one. Even getting onto the podium will be tough. The competition on his own team is tough, let alone what the rest of the peloton will throw at him. Still: Contador had a low moment during Paris-Nice. Leipheimer has had some wonderful rides this year, both in California and Italy. But he didn’t produce the sort of indomitable performance in the Giro that might make you think he can break Lance.

No predictions, anyway. Except for maybe a couple non-racing ones:

–Cadel Evans will sulk, throw a memorable tantrum or two, and finish out of the money. Crikey. Even the guy’s Twitter feed sounds whiney and fussy.

–The race will be rocked by news that one of the riders was caught doping. I hope it’s Cadel.

–Paul Sherwen will not announce he’s retiring the “suitcase of courage.”

–No one will “turn themselves inside out” during the prologue Saturday. Sunday, riders might start doing just that during the first long breakaway.

–Untold numbers of riders will “dance on the pedals” shortly before experiencing “a spot of bother.” Phil Liggett says you can count on it.

–Sheryl Crow will knock Lance off his bike just as he’s about to win the Mont Ventoux stage. All she wanted was to have some fun. …

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A Modest Proposal – Bikers, Take the High Road

An excellent read from the Times: A Modest Proposal – Bikers, Take the High Road

It includes four suggestions for New York cyclists — but applicable in most other cities — that are sure to provoke indignation and derision (or maybe not: the comments on the article are for the most parrt well reasoned):

NO. 1: How about we stop at major intersections? Especially where there are school crossing guards, or disabled people crossing, or a lot of people during the morning or evening rush. (I have the law with me on this one.) At minor intersections, on far-from-traffic intersections, let’s at least stop and go.

NO. 2: How about we ride with traffic as opposed to the wrong way on a one-way street? I know the idea of being told which way to go drives many bikers bonkers. That stuff is for cars, they say. I consider one-way streets anathema — they make for faster car traffic and more difficult crossings. But whenever I see something bad happen to a biker, it’s when the biker is riding the wrong way on a one-way street.

There will be caveats. Perhaps your wife is about to go into labor and you take her to the hospital on your bike; then, yes, sure, go the wrong way in the one-way bike lane. We can handle caveats. We are bikers.

NO. 3: How about we stay off the sidewalks? Why are bikers so incensed when the police hand out tickets for this? I’m only guessing, but each sidewalk biker must believe that he or she, out of all New York bikers, is the exception, the one careful biker, which is a very car way of thinking.

NO. 4: How about we signal? Again, I hear the laughter, but the bike gods gave us hands to ring bells and to signal turns. Think of the possible complications: Many of the bikers behind you are wearing headphones, and the family in the minivan has a Disney DVD playing so loudly that it’s rattling your 30-pound Kryptonite chain. Let them know what you are thinking so that you can go on breathing as well as thinking.
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Picture(s) of the Day: Showdown

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Photo: Copyright 2009, Mark Adkison/Hors Categorie Photography/All rights reserved.

I’m on the Davis Bike Club email list. Sometimes I get messages from a guy named Mark Adkison. Not sure whether photographing racing cyclists is his day job or the one he does for love in his spare time. He’s very good, and he’s got a little business going called Hors Categorie Photography. Every once in a while, he posts a message to the Davis list about some new group of photos he’s just published. I remember lots of shooting he’s done of the Tours of California.

Today he sent a note about a master’s road race up in Davis. I browsed just one of the albums, from Lap 3 of the race. I found myself captivated: First, by the pictures of the small peloton in the Central Valley winter fog. Second, because flipping through the pictures in sequence really tells a story: you see the guys trying to make their moves, and you see the ones coming through for their turns to pull (the guy above is a case in point; he he keeps reappearing in the front, then rolling off; he’s working for someone in that pack, I think, though I can’t tell who). I don’t know a single one of the racers, but the shots really put me there. Check out the full gallery.

(And thanks to Mark for permission to post the picture above.)

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Tour of Ireland on Versus: Why Bother?

Hey, the Tour of Ireland looks like an interesting race. Our current drive-by shooting has to do with the way Versus put the thing on the air. The network allotted an hour and a half to the race’s first three stages, all won in bunch sprints by Team Columbia’s Mark Cavendish.

Then came the decisive stages, last Saturday and Sunday. Versus allotted the same 90 minutes total to air both stages. Saturday’s ride included the picturesque and insanely narrow Conor Pass road and a loop out the Dingle Peninsula to Slea Head (hey: we walked most of this route in 1973, but that’s another story). Sunday’s finale began in Killarney and finished with a tough circuit in Cork.

The net result of jamming those two stages into one shortish broadcast was a horribly edited series of race glimpses. What was supposed to come across as a cohesive narrative of two race days came across as a chaotic and disjointed montage in which it was impossible to tell where the racers were, where groups and individuals were on the course or relative to each other. Of course, none of that stopped resident jabberers Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett from filling time with meaningless prattling about the beautiful Irish countryside and the Kingdom of Kerry.

But the broadcast was not without its charms. Charm One was a post-Stage Four interview with Cavendish. He had lost the leaders jersey after getting dropped on the Conor Pass climb. The interviewer asked him what happened. Cavendish paused, flashed a genuinely perplexed look, and said, “I got dropped.” He went on to explain that the pace set by Garmin-Chipotle’s David Millar was just too much. Charm Two was the colleens who served as podium girls. They were both taller and more robust-looking than the racers. But the truly transfixing them about them was the hideous dresses both had been given to wear. The lasses should find a solicitor and bring the designers to bar for a fashion crime of the first order.

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‘Two Wheels and Four’

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Jon Carroll, an unapologetic old fart and non-cyclist–I mean to cite his unreconstructedness as a compliment–on the favorite subject of the day: our national car-bike contretemps:

‘Two Wheels and Four‘

But bicyclists, probably by virtue of their virtue, have gotten a free pass. I too admire their decision to forgo the use of fossil fuels and improve their cardiovascular fitness. I’m on their side. So maybe someone could tell me when the word went out to all Velo Americans that stop signs, and even stoplights, were for cars and pedestrians and people in wheelchairs, but not for bicyclists.

Here’s a typical letter, from Karen Clayton, who was visiting San Francisco to meet a friend from Tokyo. On her way to dinner … well, here’s her report:

“Unfortunately, we were caught in the ‘Last Friday’ Critical Mass ride. We sat through 4 traffic light cycles. Our friend was agog – not by the Mass, but by the flouting of the traffic laws. At one point my husband edged out a tiny little bit into the cross walk, thinking we were at the end of the Mass – we did have the green light – and then another group came swooping into the intersection. One of the riders stopped, thumped our car and told us we should be aware that this ride happened on the last Friday of every month and we should ‘be careful.’

“Everyone in Tokyo rides bicycles. I did almost all of my grocery shopping by bike on my ‘housewife’ bike during the 7 years I lived there. I love to ride a bike – in the old-fashioned sense of that phrase – for pleasure, not competition. People routinely ring their bells in Japan when they are coming up behind you and everyone endeavors to be careful. It was a pleasure to ride there.”

Clayton goes on to suggest “self-policing.” I think that would be lovely. I think little bluebirds delivering bags of chocolate to the sick would be lovely too. We’ll see which happens first.”

“Velo Americans.” We like that.

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