And the winner of Julys stage is.........

For God's sake man, just say no.

Spam, tis a wondrous thing, non? My spam filter has just picked up a mail offering 'Special treatment for your beloved.' Now stupid me, I thought this was going to be an offer of new bar tape for my Colnago, or even my track bike, but it turns out that they are offering little blue tablets to put more ding in your dong, so Dee Qin, unless you can offer something that's more relevant for the average cyclist I'm deleting your mail.

So the comeback starts in Le Tour de Downunder. The UCI have waived the 6 months notification rule, by 12 days, to allow Lancey boy to be on the start line. It's a great rule and makes a lot of sense, however the precedent was set with Chipo just rocking up at California with a bike and riding.
Still the UCI claim they contacted Lance twice, to tell him about the rule and didn't get a response, hummmh, looks like UCI is drilled into Lances spam filter along with all those mails offering performance enhancing drugs.

And the winner is.....

One of the million reasons I love cycling is that there's never an off season, if you like bike racing there's action all year round, road, cross, track, XC, downhill, BMX even TTing, but of late there is of course another exciting option to keep you entertained when there is no racing (or indeed when the Tour de Poland is on) and that's who'll be caught next. This is a really exciting new twist to our sport and only a recent addition to the calendar, but one that I'm sure will go from strength to strength in the coming years.
It's October now,three months since the Le Tour finished and the stage winners are still in doubt, how exciting is that? A stage race that goes on for three months! Well done the UCI , they really are making it a 12 months round sport.
Add to this the new sport of comeback racing and, you can have a really exciting twelve months without ever once seeing someone actually ride a bike, I know we want to attract new viewers to the sport, but shouldn't they be introduced to seeing people riding bikes first?

The chip circuit.

Meanwhile, the 6-day season gears up. I should state here that in my eyes the 6-day season is the supreme height of bike racing. And this season the cup will runneth over, Zable is to knock it on the head, and will be partnered by Brad Wiggo on his final rides. All of this has prompted Brad to do a bit of training. Undoubtedly Brad will be training out from the town where he lives, this just happens to be on my training route. Now Brad has fessed up spending a few months in his local there after Athens, but this isn't the problem we find when riding through it. Our misfortune is a newly opened chip shop and as we stagger through on our circuits we are assailed by the smell of freshly chipped chips. It's getting more common to see knackered cyclists drift in for a refueling stop of the fried potato nature. You see, 'tis a town of evil temptation for the cyclist.
Brad has admitted that his dalliance in the town caused him to have a crap season, pah, we're ahead of you there boy, we're crap before we get tempted.
On second thoughts, maybe Brad will be tempted by a chippy supper, frits, fries or chips, call em what you will, form one of the corners of the triangle that make a great 6-day race, the others are beer and bike racing, oh, hang on looks like Brad is in the perfect spot to cover all bases. Looks like he'll be having a good winter.