Tell it to the dog on wheels.

www.bernhardkohl.at is still up and running if you want a laugh. Go on send him an email, you know you want to.

His management agency is www.intlsportsagency.com (office@intlsportsagency.com)





As Gerolsteiner call an end to their sponsorship a few days early and those of us with an eye for a bargain attempt to secure any team related items still in their online store, there are people far more unhappy than you could ever imagine.

Over in the outback, in deepest Katherine an Aussie by the name of Cadel is looking decidedly p'd off. His main hope of decent support in le Tour de 2009 has gone and left him, oh dear, oh dear.
Looks like Cadel will have to rely on Molly to get him through those dark nights in July, when the world wants to touch his hound and hound him into touch.
Sill as a potential investment sticking the dog onto a bike could prove pretty useful. It would certainly generate a lot of publicity, it would be more reliable that Kohl and she would doubtlessly be continually at Cadels side.

Maybe it's the way to go. With Lance riding, or not, you know where all the publicity is going to go come July 09. If you want your team to make the front page you'll have to upstage the Texan and his trusty understudy AC (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto). About the only two ways to do this is have your entire team arrested for performing indecent acts on the podium or to employ animals to ride for your team. (Doping is just so old hat, so 2008). So it may just be a good thing that alien number two has been caught. Would Cadel have beaten AC (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) in a straight fight with Kohl? Or would he stand more of a chance with a dog on wheels?

Having been selected to replace Kohl in the 09 Tour Molly gets the miles in.

Yep - the template has changed.

Just a quick line to say, as you've noticed, the look of the blog has changed. So if you were expecting to see the old green one I apologise for scaring you.
I think the new one's a little easier on the eye, although I know I do need to look at the layout a little closer.

I've stuck on a couple of extra bit's on the right, both fitness / health related. I though as this blog is supposed to be about cycling I should at least nod in the direction of fitness. (I'm not sure about those clocks though are you?)

So, enjoy, I'll be emptying my soul of cycling related issues later in the day, so stay tuned.

KoM (King of the morons)

Kohl and Schumacher consider their futures.

It came to pass that another of the Gerolsteiner riders was caught partaking of CERA. Bernard Kohl joins space alien Schumacher on, what we hope is, the road to oblivion.
Still one thing is for sure Bernard is keeping a fine tradition going. Just take a look back at the previous list of KoM winners, go back to the 80's and you have a who's who of doping. Lets take a look;
Kohl 2008,Rasmussen 05, 06, Virenque 04, 03, 99, 98,97, 96,95, 94, Botero 2000, Chiappucci 91, 92, Claveyrolat 90, Theunisse 98, Rooks 88.
They have all failed tests or admitted to doping after their retirement.

If I look at the book shelves, I see rows and rows of cycling related books. There are a lot of books on coaching, books on periodisation, weight training, diet, books on great races, autobiographies and biographies of stars and water carriers. But you know what? There's not a book on the history of doping. That would make an interesting read, who's taken what and when they took it. The protests against testing and the riders caught cheating. You could slot in a couple of comedy chapters covering the bizarre excuses offered and finish up with a look at the long term heath consequences, both physical and mental of doping. Surely there's one waiting to be written?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling#2000s
Provides a good evenings entertainment and plenty of opportunity to feel angry and pissed off. Whether or not there would be enough potential sales to encourage a publisher to put up the money is another question, but if you feel you have that great unwritten novel inside you..... feel free to make with the idea.



Don't book that Parisian hotel (yet)

Whooo, hold on there, enough with the on-line hotel booking and the suitcase packing. Lance may not be visiting France after all.
In an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport he admits he's riding the Giro to win, but goes on to say he might not ride in France.

'With the problems that I've got with the organisers, journalists and fans, I could get distracted from mission.'
He hopes a diplomatic solution can be found, but goes on to claim he's not had the OK from ASO. I bet you thought ASO had given the all clear? But just look past the September headlines and you see that they are pretty vague (how un French......ha, ha, ha). So as yet we don't know what the score is.

Lance says. "Is it possible they won't invite me? Everything is possible but I would find it incredible, a sort of own goal. I want to be in Paris but in a calm situation."
Er, yes it is quite possible he won't get asked, I don't find it incredible, come on Lance, you may well feel it's time to move on, but does everybody? An own goal, I doubt if ASO will see it like that, to be honest I doubt if they'd care how it was viewed outside Paris. Calm situation, yeah, like that's gonna happen.

If we assume that Astana have spent long enough on the naughty step for ASO to be satisfied. Then they must be in line for a ride. So if Astana are riding and Lance is a member of Astana and he's not currently under a ban, can ASO stop him?

What's I think is interesting, is that Lance not riding will generate as much publicity as Lance riding. I mean he won't be able to use the press conferences to get the cancer message across, but then is there any chance of that happening should he ride? I'd suspect the press events would follow their once traditional format, loads of questions about drugs, loads of bad blood (sorry feelings), photos of those asking awkward questions and a lot of shouting and waving of the arms. Things in Italy would I suspect be a little calmer. Maybe looking at all the potential grief will persuade him to just ride the Giro, or hey, Giro and Vuelta.
So we await the turn of events, it's all eyes to Paris, just don't let them stray towards those hotel rooms quite yet.

World Cup tickets for sale, only £500 for three days.

On a far more uplifting note (if you're a British track fan, as I am) the Sky sponsorship deal with British Cycling get's going at the first round of the world cup in Manchester in a few weeks time.
Victoria Pendleton, Ross Edgar, Jason Kenny and Jamie Staff are all to be found listed under the new Sky+HD trade team. +, is this the first time a + has appeared in a trade team name?

The world cup format of course allows trade teams in addition to national squads, so for a set-up like BC it's a great chance to give exposure and competition to even more riders.
Whilst Hoy and Wiggo aren't riding, it's pretty much the full Worlds and Olympic squads in action, so expect plenty of podiums from the home riders.

The world cup falls at a perfect time, a couple of weeks before the first of the Revolution track series and at a time when cycling is still riding high in the nations consciousness. Tickets can't be had for love nor money, although for five hundred quid I might be tempted.
A couple of years ago we sat in a half empty stadium and watched a round of the world cup, the UCI were none too impressed and said never again. However the success of the Revolution series (playing to full houses) and the World Championships caused a rethink, the result every ticket went with a couple of days of going on sale. So expect a great 3 days racing. I'll see you there.

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.

On the road with farmer giles. (it's rhyming slang)

I'm trapped inside an invisible box!
Did you know that when Dave Brailsford was at college he was part of a theater group called 'The Brothers Coppi' who would reenact famous scenes from The Tour de France through the medium of mime.
This came to mind whilst reading an article on the great Maurizio Fondriest. Not only does Mauritzo produce a range of bikes, which I have to say are bloody gorgeous, he part sponsors a team and according to the article in question grows apples, not a couple of tress you understand, but a whole 'forest' of em, although the apples in question are golden delicious an apple which I have to say are neither delicious or golden. (Not being excessively patriotic here, but if you ask me you can't beat a good British apple).

Farmer giles, never popular with cyclists.

Still all of this proves, in a slightly vague way, that our hero's have lives before and after their cycling related activity. Although some have less of a non cycling life than others and some it appears have none at all. It's hard to imagine the mighty Sean Kelly doing anything other than riding his bike, having retired he still rides it seriously, he sponsors a team, one which he is quite happy to ride with and he commentates on Eurosport. Outside of that there are rumors of a farm, but where he gets time to drive the tractor is beyond me. Perhaps our Sean is a bit like the gentleman farmers of the 18th century, who would employ someone to do the farming, whilst they just cast an eye over the proceedings.

Bernard Hinalut still rides occasionally, although looking at his waist line he's not as regular as our Sean. But the badger keeps Le Tour company each year where he acts as a go-between twix stage winners and minor clebs at the end of the day. This however is just a small part of his le Tour related activities, his main job it would appear, is, as it was in his racing days, beating the living crap out of protesters. Now you tend to get a lot of those in France and credit to Bernard he shows no favoritism on this front, whether he agrees with their point or not he's always the first to wade in fists flying. You see in his retirement Bernard regards Le Tour as he did when he was winning it, it's his personal fiefdom, that he has no role, other than a purely symbolic one makes no difference to him, he's still more than willing to sort out any potential problem in the way he always has, long may he continue.

There was I, digging a hole.




Paul Sherwen hard at it in his gold mine.


So this inevitably brings us to Paul Sherwen. Our Paul seems to spend a lot of time commentating on just about every TV channel there is. Indeed one of the highlights of this years le Tour was Paul chatting away, whilst in the background you could hear Phil doing the same for another TV network, then in a piece of well timed timing, they would swap stations and pick up where the other left off! But as we all know he has a mine in Africa. Sometimes it's described as a plain old mine and sometimes as a gold mine. Whichever it is I suspect that there's not much digging going on as young Paul seems to spend pretty much the whole year from le Tour down under to the final classics yacking away on at lest four different TV stations. There is a rumor that one of the drivers behind 'the comeback' is that the investment Lance has made in Paul's mine hasn't paid off and as a result he's a few quid light in the pocket.

Stefan Schumachers brain.

Stefan Schumacher - 'It was aliens that made me do it'.



The lab that developed the test for CERA have defended their test, saying it's "is one hundred-percent sure," So why have they done this? Apparent because Mr Schumacher has called the test into question. The reason he's done this is obviously because he's innocent. I await Piepolis view on the issue, doubtlessly he's innocent as well.

The truly amazing thing about Schumacher is that despite numerous run in's with anti doping authorities both inside cycling and outside (the police) he still persists in some sort of wired fantasy world where he is the innocent party and the world is out out get him.
This calls to mind a remark made by (I think) Dave Brailsford of British Cycling, who basically said that in order to dope and not let it affect your mental health you need to be some sort pf psychopath. The argument being that the stress involved in obtaining dope, using it in the full knowledge that it is illegal, then entering into a raft of measures to conceal all of this will have a detrimental affect on your mental health. You want proof? I'd look no further than the excuses offered by convicted dopers, it was for my dog, my wife, sweets from my auntie, too much beer, too much whiskey, it was my twin brother etc etc. These denials / excuses, call them what you will, are not the work of minds that are in full working order. Still I await Schumachers next utterance with interest, he is following the usual pattern of caught dopers, step 1 - I am innocent, step 2 - the tests are at fault, step 3 (by now the stress has caused you mind to implode) invent an excuse or blame it on someone else. We have yet to have an excuse centering around space ships and aliens, but I suspect it's only a matter of time.

It's all gone quiet over there...(thank God)

The mist has blown in from the sea and my part of the world is quiet and still.
It's also gone all silent over at comeback towers, or Lance land as I call it. It's been a few days since there was any real news, the wires are silent and apart from a few rehashed stories about AC (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) being unhappy with the return little seems to be taking place. Actually the guy I feel for in this is Levi, he must have been favorite to lead Astana in at least on of the grand tours, but now he's dropped a place in the pecking order and it will be team duties come the summer, I don't think Levi is ever a potential GT winner, but he is certainly good enough to make the podium and by rights deserves a team backing him whilst he goes for it. There has been loads of talk about poor AC (that's Alberto Contador and not AC from operation Puerto) but so far little hasbeen said about Levi, which kind of makes me admire the guy more, he's quietly getting on with the business of riding his bike and not shouting to the press about how p'd off he is.

Somewhere else that is still and silent is WADA, OK they still send out a torrent of press releases and news reports, as always, but since the departure Dick Pound there have been fewer direct attacks on cycling. What's he doing with his time now he's not slagging our sport off? I'm sure he's pounding away at something else. Is it me or did he just seem to have some sort of complex as far as cycling went? Still relations between WADA and the UCI seem a little calmer now he's gone and to be honest good riddance, he was someone who seemed to love the sound of his own voice and was always quite willing to shoot off his mouth without thinking through the consequences of what he said.
Another reason for the calmer relations between UCI and WADA is the departure of Verbruggen, no wonder things were strained when you got those two ego manics in the same room, it's a surprise the police were never called to break up a fight. I hope they are both happy in their retirement and I hope they stay a long, long way away from cycling.

Cycling TV - just say no.

Well I have finally reached the end of my tether, rather than go down the Schumacher route and let it get to me, I'm considering cancelling my subscriptions to Cycling . TV.
The reason? Er... it's unmitigated crap, that's the reason. Oh it's not the commentary, the Mccrossan brothers, Brian Smith partnership is the best there is, rather it's the God awful service that claims to be their web site.
Theses are my grips with it, Firstly the player it pops up in a separate window, why does it need to do that? I ban all pop ups and have to tweak the system to allow them. It also seems to prefer (insist?) on IE, I hate IE and use Firefox / Chrome.
Still once we've allowed pop ups and picked their preferred browser we're in. It's then the fun really begins, want to watch an old race? That would be nice wouldn't it, lets see how can we do that? I know there's a search tab, I'll use that, oh hang on I might like to watch one of the lesser races they cover, but I'm not sure what it's called, so I can't use that. Never mind I'll use the tab next to it, the 'on demand' tab, er except I won't on demand, this will only allow me to go back to the end of Le Tour and not before, so if I want to see a race prior to the last week in July I'd better know exactly what it's called or else I'm screwed.
But wait, there's help at hand, a site map is (well) hidden at the bottom of the page, maybe this will assist me? Well it displays a 2008 race calendar, but that's all it does, there are no links to take me to the video of said race, still a quick copy and paste and drop the race name into the search facility and off we go,sometimes.
My point is this, why so many hoops to jump through to get a list of previous events? Why is the old system of displaying all the races that have been covered in one easily accessible place no longer in use? I'll tell you, they have moved to a new interface (it's been in use all year and still has the word beta on it - that tells you a lot), nothing wrong with that. But it appears that it has been put together by a code monkey and then tested by another code monkey, neither of whom has any knowledge or interest in cycling and most certainly neither is a user of the interface. It would have been a simple and inexpensive task to actually properly test the new interface and get some usable functionality into it, but hey, why do that when it can look nice. The result is p'd off users, we want to stay because when we eventually find a race the commentary is excellent, the camera work is good and it's cheaper than Eurosport, ah well, rant over, I might just go and ride my bike.
And that's another thing, have you seen the state of my training bike? Don't I ever get to clean it?.........

The law of the playground.

Puking for Britain.

Over at the site of the new sponsor, Sky, there's a lot of cycling news, nothing you don't see elsewhere and no working RSS feed, but credit where etc etc. They do however pick 12 young athletes who they expect to blast for Gold in 2012 and would you believe it, there are three cyclists, Jason Kenny, Anna Blyth and Shanaze Reade. Has there ever been a list of future British hopefuls where cyclists have made up 25% of the total? No I don't recall it either. Still looks like they're going to push the profile and that is a big plus.
On of the odd things that I read a couple of weeks ago was a small article in (I think) the Independent on Sunday,where it was reported that the Sky deal was £47 million, surely a very bad typo? or does the Indy know something we don't?

So, anyway, there's a do for all the Sky big wigs up at the velodrome, the D is cordoned off and there are crisps, sandwiches and fizzy pop for all. Meanwhile a squad training session is taking place on the track. A certain young sprinter puts in a massive effort having not fully warmed up properly, leaves the track and promptly throws up in the nearest waste bin, providing the assembled Sky exec's with a spectacular view of exactly what their investment is bringing them (that's total commitment and all out effort, as opposed to that mornings breakfast).

I vant to drink your blood.....

Meanwhile back in the real world, there is soon to be a test for blood transfusions, so in maybe a few months we will get a whole new batch of tests from this years Le Tour and hopefully the Olympics (I assume the IOC will sign up and use the test), once again it will be all bets off for who won those Le Tour stages, you never know, by the time the 09 race starts we might just have a clear (cleaner?) picture of who won what in 08.
I said I assume the IOC will follow suite and I think they will, they wont really have an option will they? They will certainly lose all credibility if the samples that they plan to keep for 8 years don't get tested with every new test that comes out of the armory. How many rewrites of Olympic history will the new test bring?
Now what's the betting that there will be a fair few samples that will have become contaminated and won't be retested? I await the new set of results for CREA with interest.

Lemond has recently made the point that true testing needs to include VO2 Max and power output, both of which can be done now. This would enable the authorities to monitor progression and changes over a longer period and therefore gain a more accurate view of changes. So why isn't this being done? Well, er.... ask Uncle pat. Yes there would be a big, indeed very big, initial outlay, but the pay of would be a massive step in the fight against doping, more confidence for sponsors and fans that they are witnessing a true winner and perhaps best of all a stick to beat the IOC, WADA and other sports with.

Of course you would hear the old song about infringement of athletes rights, personal freedom etc etc. But you know what? How about the right's of fans who travel all over the world watching their sport? How about the sponsors and TV networks who what value for their investment? No I'm sorry, it was the athletes, in all sports, who indulged in a frenzy of doping, silence, cover up and bizarre excuses, as they say in the play ground 'you started it, I'll finish it'