Hein Verbruggen - Cycling's greatest visionary .

There is a bizarre rumor that Lance is going to buy Le Tour de France.
Now normally I'd ignore this as silly season empty paper talk. But this, I'm scared to say, has the ring of truth, not because LA is involved, oh no, the reason it looks like a possibility to me is the involvement of Hein Verbruggen.
I'd rate the LA inspired takeover of Le TdF as possibly one of the worst things ever to happen to the sport, I haven't got a concrete reason (I'll work that one out tonight). You see disasters for the world of cycling and the name Hein Verbruggen seem to go hand in hand. Major crisis at the 98 Tour? Hein goes on holiday, UCI to take a major roll in the fight against drugs? Hein seems well hidden away. The madness that was the ProTour? Hein's bright idea. No if there's a disaster on the horizon there's safe money to be made in betting out Hein is behind it. Mere mention of the mans name is enough to make my blood run cold.
In all seriousness if you want to manage the future of world cycling you could replace Hein with a trained chimp, all the chimp would have to do is pull slips of paper out of the hat. You could get school kids that know nothing about cycling to write ideas on slips of paper, stick 'em in the hat and chimppy could pull 'em out one at a time and they could all become official UCI policy.

'I want a rabbit' - Each UCI team to employ at least 1 rabbit.
'I've put a saucepan on my head' - All helmets to be replaced with saucepans.
'I don't want to eat the cabbage' - New blood test introduced, excessive amount of cabbage residue equal a two year ban, pending appeal.
'I want a biscuit' - all race food to be biscuits - new sponsorship opportunities here me thinks.
'I want to ride bike' - All team bikes to have stabilisers fitted until monkey boy pulls out one saying...
'I want to ride with no stabilisers'
'I don't want to go to bed' - All races to be nocturnes
'I don't like mummy' - Womens races are banned
'I don't like daddy' - Mens races banned

And so on until you lose the will to live, which when Hein is around is pretty damn quick.


Did you know that cycling journalists have their own world championships? Why, couldn't this be re named as your average 4th cat chipper? Ever wondered what happens to all those beautiful test bikes? Well here they are in their full glory. I'm just not sure that when the worlds premier bike makers hand over their lovingly prepared machines they had the vision of a bunch of wanna be journos bashing them to death. Still a rainbow jersey is awarded apparently for the winner of the race and not the most sycophantic piece of writing. Shame that.