Tis the season to be jolly.

This is coffee, please take a good sniff.

Our friend Jorg Jaksche is getting back on his bike, this time for a salary of one Euro!
Jaksche as you'll recall had been poking around in the medicine cabinet and as a result got sent to sit on the naughty step by uncle Pat.
He later admitted that he had no intention on returning to cycling, preferring to carry out daylight robbery and become a lawyer. However he has since changed his 'mind' and is now preparing for a season with Cinelli-OPD. That'll be the same Cinelli-OPD that Frank Vandenbroucke is riding for. Now I don't know too much about funding a professional cycling team, but Mad Frankie is bringing his own sponsors to the party, so that's two riders for the year and all for one Euro. That's a lot of publicity for, well, for nothing. Mind you in the riders riding for nothing v publicity scale it is but a small tremor compared to the fun at Astana towers.


One Stefan Schumacher, there's only one Stefan Schumacher. (thank God)
I'm joining the Stefan Schumacher fan club (assuming there is one). He's great, he really is. His level of delusion is up there with the Hamilton twins and good ol' Ginger Floyd (like Pink Floyd, but, allegedly they took fewer 'substances').
His latest outburst is looking promising, "I am innocent, I love this job and I am only 27-years-old. I want to win races again." Stefan, Stefan, hasn't anyone explained to you yet that the only way you won races is because you took the magic beans that you got offered by the naughty wizard?
The Quick Step training camp looks like it will be fun. Will they be employing bouncers to keep Stefan out of their hotel? Will they have the judges place a restraining order on him that prevents him from coming within 100 meters of them when on their bikes? Cos it looks like they'll need to do something as Stefan is determined to be there, invited or not, he's crashing the Quick Step party and he's bringing his own bottle. "When I get a license, then we will surely sit down and talk. I will get the license, I have a valid contract and I have the goal of being successful with Quick Step." Yes Stef, but successful in what capacity, cos it looks pretty certain that it won't involve riding a bike.

Leonardo Piepoli has held his hand up like a good little scumbag and admitted that he was partaking of the substance known as 'Ricco's little helper'.
We had the usual whinging about wrong decisions and mistakes, but then we had 'It is futile to name names, it is a lot of people who were already prosecuted' So if 'a lot' of the people involved have been prosecuted that means that there are some that haven't and must therefore be offering their special brand of support to other riders. Roll on the date when the EU make doping a criminal offense and we see our first prison sentence.

Bringing it all back home.

Katusha have been 'unveiled' at a big meet the team bash in Moscow. Putin was amongst the guests, which I have to say is one in the eye for the Halfords-Bikehut team and their miserable attempt to get Gordon Brown/Tony Blair/George Bush to their presentation.

Lots of photos of riders rugged up against the cold whilst showing everybody their 'nice ' new jersey. I felt really sorry for the Italians, who seemed totally confused about what was going on, team presentations in the cold? What the hell was all that about? Filippo Pozzato and Danilo Napolitano look really unhappy, but ever game they cracked a half smile. Incidentally does anyone look less like a professional cyclist than Danilo Napolitano?

Attention race organisers.

Running a race in 2009 and need some publicity? Simple, just announce to the world that Lance is riding it. He doesn't actually need to have it on his schedule. All you need to do is drop a few hints on a convenient forum, maybe a quick call to a 'friendly' jurno who's after a scoop and 'Pat's your Uncle'. Lance will issue a denial saying something along the lines that it's a nice race, but, sorry, it's not on his schedule and he won't be riding it. You can then issue a statement saying Lance denies interest in riding your event, but you're still 'keeping open the channel of communication'. This allows you to issue a statement every few days to the effect that Lance is still not riding your event, but as ever you remain hopeful that he will change his mind. A few weeks of this and you'll up your profile so much you will have riders, teams and sponsors fighting to sign up. Not convinced it will work? You'll be surprised, it seems to be a favoured tactic of several race organisers during the 'off' season. So if your local evening 10 mile ITT is lacking a certain something......



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Alternative careers for dopers

Jörg Jaksche says NO to pro cycling!

One ex doper who isn't making a return to racing is Jörg Jaksche. In a move that outraged the world of Professional cycling Jörg Jaksche has admitted that he has no desire to race again and instead will concentrate on his law studies and hopes to become a lawyer.

When asked by the UCI to explain this outrage Jaksche responded:
'I always intended to return to cycling, but during the hearing I found out how much I was going to have to pay my lawyer and I thought sod this for a game of soldiers. I can earn ten times as much sitting on my ass. Also it has to be said, there are no dope tests for lawyers so I won't need to give my whereabouts 24 hours a day.'

Hurray for Jorg. If the UCI seriously want to rid the sport of dopers they could do a lot worse than set up a careers service offering alternative careers for ex-dopers. When I say alternative careers I mean something other than appearing on TV saying how sorry they are, or how they were a victim or best of all how innocent they are. I have some suggestions:
Michael Rasmussen could become a sparing partnet for Joe Calzaghe, Riccardo Ricco could become crash test dummy and the Tyler Hamilton twins could join the circus as part of the traveling freak show.

Lock up your medicine cabinets.

And talking of freaks I'm pleased to see Rudy Pevenage is off to become DS for Rock Racing. Now there's a match made in heaven if ever there was one.
Logically it makes a lot of sense, you're a mid range US team, you want to race at a higher level in Europe, you need a DS with experience and knowledge of the races, one who's well known in the peloton. Sadly Rudy Pevenage's experience is mainly of avoiding dope controls and dishing out the pills during his time at Telecom.
When Rudy was Rudy and his Telecom boys were in town it wasn't so much a case of 'Lock Up your daughters.' as 'Lock up your medicine cabinets.'

Still, hat's off to Michael Ball, he likes to give people a second chance, which under the current climate is all fine and dandy. And they say all publicity is good publicity so for next to nothing Ball gets a ton of coverage across the globe for his product.
And you know what it works, only yesterday I went out into the garden and picked up a couple of rocks, mind you I made sure I gave then a full blood test before I bough them into the house.


Wanted more fat men in cycling.

Spend your time with cyclists and you begin to think 'Obesity crisis, what obesity crisis'.
Cyclists are far too obsessed by their weight. Most of us complain about being a couple of kilos over weight, although what this mythical weight is we never make clear. There is however an unwritten understand that all any of us need to do is shed those few kilos and we'll soon be 'flying'. Although actual doing some quality training would be the answer for most of us.

So it's with great pleasure that I've been catching up with the Ghent 6.
Ghent is a great 6 day race, and is, what I believe today's young people call ' Well old school, daddy-O' init!'
The reason for my love of Ghent, isn't just due to the racing. Oh no, my love of Ghent is due to Joop Zijlaard .
Joop is a Derny driver, well that's not strictly true, he is the Derny drivers Derney driver. He is to driving a Derny what Cav is to the final 200 of a race, that is the undisputed king.

Joop combines the three elements that make for a great 6 day race.
1 - Showmanship, quite simple no one, including the riders, is as great a showman as Joop, playing to the crowd, taking the piss out of his fellow drivers, toying with the riders, Joop could keep the crowd entertained on his own for most of the evening.

2 - Skill. His size belies his competitive nature, allied to an inate ability to know where he is on the track. Throw in a sense of timing and understanding of racing that most riders don't have and you're on to a winner.

3 - Bulk. Sitting behind a Derney will knock about a third of the air resistance out of your way as you peddle round. Sit behind Joop and you have a void where there is barely enough air to breath, result almost zero wind resistance.

And for a sponsor? He's a dream, you can get as much advertising on one Joop as you can on a whole team of skinny climbers.

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