One for the good guys.

Paris - Tours (at last a bike race takes place)

Good guys do win, that's the message from Paris-Tours. Gilbert's win is one not just for a good guy, but one for a good team. FDJ have long had a strong anti doping ethic and their team were roundly cheered at the 07 le Tour for their stand against doping and chickens.
But it wasn't just a good day for the guys at FDJ, Landbouwkrediet, Bouygues Telecom and Agritubel had riders making up the winning move. Proving that the 'smaller' teams can do the business just as well as the big boys and that if you try hard enough you effort will pay off. The four fought hard to stay away from the peloton and fully deserve their success.
For a small team like Landbouwkrediet it was a big day, 2nd for Jan Kuyckx in a major classic is a huge result for the Belgian squad and one they fully deserve. Landbouwkrediet have a good reputation in the UK due to their employment of Manning, Clancy and Stannard and many British fans will be pleased with their result.

Gilbert finally got a big one and hopefully this will give him the spur to go onto bigger things next season. He is one rider that has spoken out against doping and stated his determination to ride hard no matter what the odds, well yesterday the odds were in his favor as he found himself with three hardworking and fully committed riders all of whom had something to gain and all of who can feel more than happy with their days work. It was a well deserved victory and an undoubtedly bright spot in what has been a pretty dire week in the world of professional cycling.

Lance, he's a little ray of sunshine. (For a certain young Spaniard.)

Anything else happened,.... er, well..... oh yes...... the comeback, I almost forgot.
Lance will for the first time ride the Giro, which next year clocks up 100 years. In fact 'Everybody says that the Giro will be the kick-off to the Tour while I know I could come to Italy to be a winner and that the Giro will be my true three-week stage race of the year,'
says Lance. At thirty eight there can be no way he'd seriously go for both the Giro and le Tour, although you'd never quite rule that out, would you? So, you know what? That seems to have put something of a smile back on AC's (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) face, the boy seems a lot happier now and I guess for Astana it's win, win, win all the way. Lance to go for the Giro, AC (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) for le Tour and a straight two way fight between Levi and AC (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) for the Vuelta.
Now with all this publicity the Astana brand, let alone the Livestrong brand will just get bigger and bigger. Just remind me, what's an Astana? It's a Kazakhstan cheese isn't it? Anyway, whether it's cheese or jam, I'll be first in the queue when they start selling it in the UK, maybe it's a brand of shirt or a carpet manufacturer, who knows.

That one announcement has brought a lot of jollity to AC (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) and he seems to have changed his tune in double quick time and now appears surprised that there were teams interested in signing him, yeah, right.

The IOC - down the toilet with the dopers - it's official.



Are you afraid of needles? Don't worry the IOC is at hand. They don't like them either.

You'll recall that a few days ago a hither too unknown IOC official was calling for cycling to be expunged from the history book and all bicycles to be thrown in the crusher. So you can imagine my surprise (not) when it turns out that the glowing edifice that is the IOC isn't as luminescent as they would have us believe.

It seems that the IOC's claim to be at the forefront in the war against doping is about as believable as AC's (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) one that he was surprised other teams wanted his signature.
It was revealed last night (to I suspect stifled laughs at UCI HQ) that the IOC concealed inadequacies, shortcomings and generally being crap in its anti-doping procedures during the Beijing Olympics. Of the 4770 tests carried out 300 still lack proper documentation and results, which just about makes them worthless in an anti doping fight. But it's not just the on the day testing procedures that have had problems, oh no. The Athletes Whereabouts documentation from almost half the national Olympic associations was junk. 102 out of 205 proved to have insufficient or no information relating to where their athletes were at certain times. This was despite the IOC requesting the information on multiple occasions. Can you imagine what would happen if cyclists were unable to provide information as to their whereabouts? The IOC, WADA, Uncle Tom Cobley and all would call into question our right to exist and yet almost 50% of the nations at the Olympics failed to do this and no one says a dickey bird.

But hey, don't worry, all of that has obviously not been commented on, because it pales into insignificance when you look at how many sports have signed up to the IOC's blood testing programme. Yes whilst cycling is pilloried the IOC have quietly forgotten to mention that of the 28 international summer sports federations only 4 ( yes that's 4 out of 28), namely cycling, athletics, rowing and modern pentathlon have agreed to subject it's athletes to screening to reduce the chances of any blood doping.
Perhaps, and here's a thought, the UCI should stand up and say they don't want to be part of the Olympics, an organisation that is clearly 'down the toilet', an organisation that is incapable of fighting the dopers, unable to conduct reliable tests and is reliant on poor practice and ineffective procedure.

The IOC anti doping committee meet to consider what to do next.

Now is the time

for all good people to come to the aid of their sport.......

Someone at the IOC has suggested that cycling get the heave ho out of the Olympics, and you know what, I see his point. I mean cycling obviously has a doping problem, any fool can see that. But what of other sports? Do other sports monitor blood levels as strictly as we do and then use that data to target possible cheats? er no, they don't. Once again the fact that there is a comprehensive programme that catches cheats is used as a stick to do the beating with. How about the IOC insist on standardised testing procedures across all sports, across all nations and then see who's taking the piss and who's clean? Oh no, can't do that, some nations don't have the resources to monitor and test their athletes as fully as those in the developed world do they, so it could be seen as unfair, couldn't it? Well guess what, the IOC has a few quid (Dollars, Euros, Francs, whatever) in the bank, how about they use some of the megga money they are given every two years to finance comprehensive monitoring programmes across all sports, across all nations?
How many athletes were tested at the Olympics? You mean to tell me that they were all clean? Ha, ha, ha

Loss of Olympic status would effectively kill the sport at the top end in this and indeed many other countries, Aus, NZ, etc, countries with no big professional scene to support riders, countries where the Olympics are seen as the major event and are funded accordingly.

Uncle Pat - Attack dog of the UCI

In a weird twist of history Uncle Pat has gone on the attack, perhaps the first time a UCI pres has done this, he is reported to have said....

"It is completely unacceptable for Thomas Bach to be saying this. I don't like talking about other sports, but there are other sports with persistent problems. Instead of firing guns at cycling he should fire guns equally at them as well."

Well, good on ya Uncle Pat, at last someone with the balls to say something that might ruffle a few feathers. He's probably had to go and have a lie down after that, but still I'm impressed.
I still think the UCI should press for life bans and top that up with sanctions for national associations of countries where doping still takes place, it should be the UCI, WADA that decide how long bans are and who they are applied to, the current situation with some national associations having different perspectives from others is a face. Removing national teams from a years worth of World Championships might wake a few people up.

CN has an interesting quote from Sebastian Lang, I'll drop the quote in full (apologies to CN) cos I think it's important

"When it was announced that there was a new test for CERA, we were all happy. We sat on the bus and really celebrated, The whole team... except Stefan. He was suddenly very quiet and withdrawn. So we, other riders got together and discussed it. Finally we and the team management openly asked him whether there was something we should worry about." The response? "He just openly lied in our faces and said that everything was OK. Cheats must be caught and punished. All of them. Even when it is another heavy blow for cycling."

He joins a long list of those that will speak out, often with considerable anger against dopers. Time to move on? My arse it is.

I've just looked back at the last few entries, huuummmhh, hopefully in the next few days I'll actually have some bike racing to write about.

Once a crit always a crit

And so, stage one of Le Tour de Britain. How was it for you? From the comfort of my front room it was, well er... a crit. Now we all know that crits can be very exciting, full of attacking riding, intermediate sprints, desperate breaks doomed to fail and desperate breaks doomed to success. So dispite all of this ITV 4 managed to make the whole procedure deathly dull, did you see any intermediate sprints? any KoM points being fought over? Did you see any breaks being caught or the effort to being them back? er, neither did I. There must have been at least an attempt at the three KoM sprints cos House won the jersey for the men in black (that's the men in black as opposed to the men in black), but you'd never have known from watching the thing on TV. I just hope this isn't a foretaste of the next week.
On the bright side no mentions that the stage winner had just come back from a drugs ban, we'll have to wait until the papers tomorrow for that I expect.
But hey, why watch the bike race when you can watch some fans being interviewed, the poor guys had the microphone stuck under their noses just as the race was coming through and you could tell they were all thinking 'piss off the race is about to arrive'

Lets hope for better coverage tomorrow eh?

A great result for the Brits Rob Hayles in 2nd, Russ Downing in 4th and Roger Hammond in 6th, infact even better when you count Maggs in 3rd.
Did my eyes decieve me? I thought the Hamilton twins had won the US pro champs, and therefor had to wear the US national chcmps jersey, I thought that was a UCI rule (not that UCI rules ever impnged into the lives of cyclings favourite twins), so what do they seem to be wearing? yep a Union flag monstrosity, with a different sponsor to the rest of the squad, who all seem to have had a little help from Harrods (happy memories eh?)

Meanwhile, back in Bejing it's Gold, Gold, Gold as GB cyclists continue to rack up the shiney stuff - brilliant performances, two world records - more to come as well.

I keep hearing cycling is now everones favourite sport, oh God, now after years of neglect and poor media coverage we now have to put up with every politician in the country jumping on the bandwagon. Sir Chris seemed a tad unhappy about this, as did Brad Wiggo when he spoke to the 2012 party goers. But they are both right, 'we' have been doing this for years and no one was interested, suddenly..... Would there be calls for Scotland to have a separate O's team in Sir Chris had been injured (God forbid) the week before the O's and not won his 3 Golds? Are thses calls and statements made with any idea as to what goes on to deliver a successful cycling team in peak condition at the height of their form to a series of races? Of course not, there's a band waggon out there so lets all jump on and ride it until the next big thing comes along.

On the plus side of all these flowers being thrown before us as we ride the roads of the UK, we had some new kids turn up at coaching on Saturday, they'd seen cycling on the box and wanted to have a go, so we had 'em doing the rounds of Go-Ride activities and they seemed to enjoy it and only one crash, but luckily no blood. Hopefully they'll stick with it.