Pro Vino' - one of the better race analysis I've seen

From a blog that I'm going to start following more regularly Cyclocosm.com, here is a great post that really captures how I wish Versus covered bike racing. Of course, post-race analysis gets the time to re-watch and piece together all the parts that made (or didn't) make the race work. But Cosmo Catalano knows his bike racing and knows what makes a race.

This video on Cyclocosm is a good rebuttal for those more interested in Vino's doping than his riding. He's not David Millar and thank god, because we already have one of those.

Now for something completely different. I just starting using Cadmus to helping organize my Twitter feeds. Drawing from your Twitter followers, Cadmus groups together trending topics so that you can see what your friends are conversing about. It's a great social media tool that makes Twitter a lot more focused and useful, especially for smaller businesses and organizations looking to get the most out of their social media presence.

When can/should we believe cyclists?

After winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège last weekend for the second time, Vino called his victory "revenge."

Revenge for what? Revenge against whom?  And why is Vinokourov - who was pretty quiet during his two year suspension - so vocal now? Is this guilt speaking? Another cover-up?

All the news outlets have been all over his victory with headlines like "Vino's victory overshadowed by questions about his past" (Cycling News), "Vinokourov's Liege win leaves mixed emotions" (Cycling Weekly UK) and even the truly classy The New York Times published an article more about the doping controversy than Vino's race.


He's riding the same as a he did two years ago, aggressive, unforgiving and really f-ing hard. So how can we tell the difference between the clean Vino and the doped-up cyclist?


I get that both Bjarne Riis and David Millar have launched effective counters to their doping pasts that don't (completely) overshadow them every time they show up for a race. But Millar's never reached the individual success he had when he was doped to the gills. And like Vino, both men only admitted to doping/"mistakes of the past" AFTER it was clear that they had. 


So is that the price you pay for risking everything to end up with an asterisk next to your name in the history books?  I'd like to hear Vino respond to that. Because that asterisk seems like the best revenge against a doper. A little star saying that weren't strong enough to do it alone. You paid for your strength. You didn't have what it took.


In the meantime, I'm going to keep buying decorations like these cool Far and Near Housing Covers for my bike that aren't really necessary and don't make me fast but look really cool anyway.

Lost in translation

Oh, Internet. You know me so well. This link was the highest recommended on Stumble Upon based "on my personal interests."

I was more interested in this article from the Italian pink newspaper la Gazetta dello Sport (the Giro d'Italia's organizer - hence the pink). There's another doping scandal, blah blah blah. But even more delightful than learning that Denis Menchov might have been doped to the gills during the 2009 Giro, is the creative translation from Italian to English. Now the following sentence is a bit spotty but makes basic sense:

Austrian investigators say all'Humanplasma we would go some riders from Rabobank, including the Russian Denis Menchov, pink jersey, 2009, championship competitors and more skiers from Austria and Germany.

Clearly Rabobank expanded their recruiting criteria not only to tall, nearly translucent and blond cyclists (see: Michael Rasmussen, Menchov, etc.) but also those willing to periodically swap out their blood. But the plot thickens as la Gazetta reveals some little known facts about former world champion Alessandro Ballan.

Pharmacist degree (obtained in Bologna) and preparation of fact (he often worked with teams Saronni) in recent years coupled with Stephen's Ice Cream, American, among others, Alessandro Ballan, the 2008 champion, breeder of horses more for hobby (the binomial breeder-trainer, and animal-athlete, frequently used in doping cases); doctor.

Holy shit!!! Ballan was using horse blood for his doping?!?! And there's an American cycling team called Stephen's Ice Cream? Is this a new Stephen Colbert sporting project?

                                                     Alessandro Ballan loves his ponies

This is a rare instance where I hope *hope* that references about Ballan's being a breeder of horses for more than a hobby is a reference only to Ballan making a little stallion transfusion. Otherwise my mind has gone down the path of a love that dare not speak its name... and there are some things I'm not willing to do to become a cat 3 racer.

 

Sorry, Silver.  Not tonight.

*update 4/9 - Ballan is suspended by BMC prior to the start of Paris-Roubaix this Sunday.